Silver Price Forecast: XAG/USD consolidates around $22.70, downside seems favored ahead of US NFP

• Silver price is oscillating around $22.70 as investors await US NFP for further guidance.
• The USD Index has surrendered its entire gains generated after the release of the upbeat US ADP Employment report.
• Silver price is struggling to show a meaningful recovery despite finding strength near the lower portion of the Rising Channel pattern.

Silver price (XAG/USD) is demonstrating back-and-forth moves around $22.70 in the early London session. The white metal is struggling to find direction as investors are awaiting the release of the United States Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) data for further guidance.

S&P500 futures are displaying a lackluster performance in Europe. The 500-US stocks basket futures are failing to show recovery, which indicates that the market sentiment is bearish. The US Dollar Index (DXY) has extended its losses to near 103.00. The extent of the downside shows that the USD Index has surrendered its entire gains generated after the release of the upbeat US Automatic Data Processing (ADP) Employment report.

Considering strong cues from the US ADP report, US NFP is expected to remain upbeat. Contrarily, analysts at Credit Suisse expect payroll gains to slow to 190K in June, as in our view, all evidence points to a slower, but still historically robust, rate of job gains. We expect the unemployment rate to tick lower to 3.6%, while average hourly earnings should remain at 0.3% MoM.

Further action by the Federal Reserve (Fed) will be heavily based on the release of the employment gamut. For now, an interest rate hike by the Fed in July is likely as core inflation is still stubborn due to resilient demand.

Silver technical analysis

Silver price is struggling to show a meaningful recovery despite finding strength near the lower portion of the Rising Channel chart pattern formed on a two-hour scale. The white metal has failed to sustain above the 200-period Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $23.00, which indicates that the long-term trend is bearish.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) (14) has slipped into the bearish range of 20.00-40.00, which indicates more weakness ahead.

Silver two-hour chart