Gold prices are heading higher on a risk-off Friday, triggered by a...
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XAUUSD
In this section, you will find our latest XAUUSD news and a live XAUDUSD chart for technical analysis.
What is XAU/USD?
XAUUSD is the financial symbol for gold vs. the US dollar. Specifically, it answers the question of, “How much is one ounce of gold in US dollars?”
Gold, as a commodity, can be dated as far back as 2,500 years ago. It is historically regarded as a precious metal that is able to maintain and even increase its value despite wars and natural disasters. For this reason, gold is considered a safe-haven asset.
Trading gold has become increasingly popular in the past few years. The financial crisis of 2008 and the eurozone debt crisis in 2010 caused a global decline in equities markets and forced investors to re-think diversifying their portfolios to include safe-haven assets like gold.
Most forex brokers nowadays offer gold to be traded against other currencies like the euro, Swiss franc, and the Australian dollar. XAUUSD is still the most popular pair to trade among forex traders because the commodity was traditionally priced in US dollars and also because the dollar is the most widely-used currency in the world.
With this said and because it does not have its own supporting economy, gold tends to be sensitive to the movements of the US dollar. The two have been known to have an inversely-proportional relationship that when gold is up, the dollar tends to be down, and vice versa.
Other factors that affect the price of gold will be supply and demand and more popularly, market sentiment. XAUUSD tends to rally in times of uncertainty or risk aversion and fall when risk appetite encourages investors to seek higher-yielding assets.
