"Gold has been consolidating for weeks and finally broke free yesterday, the momentum from that move could be sustaining the rally," OANDA analyst Craig Erlam said. U.S. economic readings continued to reflect the deeper impact of the pandemic, as data showed 2.98 million Americans filed for state unemployment benefits last week. "The background noise for the trade war continues ... Also, oil is going up today which is sort of helping the underlying inflation momentum for gold," said Stephen Innes, chief market strategist at financial services firm AxiCorp.