Gold prices** held steady on Friday morning, mainly affected by the uncertain pace of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts, and gold prices remained in the range above $2,050 ounces**, with no significant fluctuations during the Eurasian session. Gold prices rose nearly 2% this week, mainly supported by weaker US dollar and US Treasury yields**. As for the Fed's current anti-inflation policy direction, it will continue to curb inflation through a high interest rate environment, and maintain a decline in the direction of the central bank's policy target of 2%. Although the previous data reflected higher-than-expected inflation, the central bank still maintained the same policy to wait and see the change in inflation level. The US labour force data is now starting to weaken, suggesting that the duration of high US interest rates may have an impact on this. On the other hand, it will help curb wage inflation, with last week's unemployment data reflecting the highest number of unemployed in the United States in nearly two months. Wait and see the recent data to bring a clear direction for the direction of the market's interest rate cut expectations**.
The U.S. non-farm payrolls data for January was released late Friday, with a value of 3530,000 people. Gold prices** are nearing lower. Compared to the previous market**, there will be an increase of 180,000 jobs in January, which is a significant increase in the non-farm payrolls data. The report was expected to show that the US labor market was cooling, and there were fewer signs of weakness in the data. Some economists pointed out that the seasonal pattern of mass layoffs in January seems to have diminished based on previous data trends. It will be interesting to see if the data will exceed expectations again and change the Fed's original policy direction. It remains to be seen what the direction of policy will be in March, and the Fed's delay in cutting interest rates will increase the likelihood of a one-off rate cut in the future. The Fed is still unable to confirm that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%, so data is needed as a precursor for central bank policy, and the market will bet on the likely change in the direction of the data**.