Gold now seems to have entered a bearish consolidation phase and was seen oscillating in a narrow trading range near 5-week lows, below 100-day SMA.

A strong wave of US Dollar buying interest, triggered by the recent upsurge in the US bond yields, was seen as one of the key factors weighing heavily on the dollar-denominated commodity over the past 1-1/2 week.

This coupled with easing geopolitical tensions, and improving investors' appetite for riskier assets, further dented demand for traditional safe-haven assets and collaborated to the commodity's break below the 100-day SMA support on Thursday, for the first time since late December.

Meanwhile, a mildly softer tone around the US Treasury bond yields extended some support to the non-yielding yellow metal and prompted some short-covering from $1315 level on Friday.

Investors also seemed inclined to lighten their bearish bets ahead of today's advance US Q1 GDP growth figures. The uptick, however, seemed lacking any strong follow-through, with yesterday's bearish break below an important moving average indicating some additional weakness in the near-term.