This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It reflects my own reading of the charts and the news flow, and nothing here should be taken as financial advice.

Gold gave me a proper scare on my charts yesterday, and this morning it’s trying to prove that scare was overdone. I watched the M30 candle on my MT5 terminal punch straight through $4,300 and keep falling into the $4,240s within half an hour of the Fed statement — the kind of wick that makes you double-check your stops are actually where you think they are. Twelve hours later, price is back knocking on $4,300 again, and the question I’m sitting with this morning is whether that was a genuine flush-out or just the calm before the next leg.

Opening

XAU/USD is trading in the $4,290–$4,310 pocket as I write this, up on the day after Wednesday’s sharp post-Fed selloff. My own feed has the M30 candles opening around $4,291 and printing a high near $4,299 in the early European hours, broadly in line with the wider quoted range of roughly $4,258–$4,318 over the past 24 hours. That puts gold roughly 1% higher on the day, clawing back a decent chunk of Wednesday’s drop but still sitting well below the $4,368 high it touched just before the Fed decision.

The story in one line: the Fed hiked, gold dropped hard, and now it’s fighting to prove the drop was a knee-jerk rather than the start of something bigger.

Fundamental Landscape

Wednesday was a genuinely rare event for this cycle — the Federal Reserve raised the fed funds rate by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00%, its first hike since 2023, in a unanimous decision. Chair Kevin Warsh didn’t soften it either: he said policy wasn’t restrictive enough yet, and the updated dot plot has the median official expecting rates near 4.1% by year-end, with most of the committee pencilling in at least one more hike before December. That’s a genuine regime shift after a long stretch of the market pricing cuts, and it’s the single biggest driver of everything else happening in markets right now.

The dollar took that hawkish signal and ran with it — the DXY pushed through the 100.00 handle for the first time in roughly seven weeks, and on my Investing.com feed the December futures contract is sitting around 99.93 after an earlier push just past 100.10. The 10-year Treasury yield spent Tuesday testing 5.04%, its highest since 2007, and is still hovering close to that level this morning. That combination — higher-for-longer rates, a stronger dollar, elevated real yields — is textbook headwind for a non-yielding asset like gold.

And yet gold is up on the day. My reading is that a 25bp hike was already sitting at somewhere around 90–94% probability going into the meeting, so a lot of the hawkishness was pre-positioned. What actually caught the market off guard was the tone from Warsh and the dot plot itself, and that’s what produced the overnight air-pocket. Now that the shock has been absorbed, the metal is finding some footing — helped, I think, by the fact that the structural bid under gold hasn’t gone anywhere: central banks bought close to 289 tonnes in the second quarter, a Q2 record, and ETF holdings have been climbing toward fresh highs. Layer geopolitics on top — the Iran situation and the disruption around Gulf oil supply is still keeping a safe-haven premium in the price, even while the same story pushes oil (and inflation expectations) higher, which cuts the other way for the Fed.

Asia & Europe Sessions

The Asian session carried on with the post-Fed digestion rather than reversing it — gold spent the early hours consolidating in the low $4,260s to $4,290s, still shaking off the overnight wick toward the $4,230s–$4,260s. Into the London open, I’ve watched a steadier grind higher on my charts, with price working back above $4,290 and testing the $4,300 handle without yet closing convincingly above it. Volume and volatility have both cooled compared with Wednesday’s move, which tells me this is more of a recovery than a fresh directional push.

The one live wildcard for the European session is the Bank of England decision at midday London time. The market leans toward a hold at 3.75%, but UK inflation just ticked up to 3.1%, and the MPC has been deeply split in recent votes. Any surprise there could shake GBP and spill into the dollar index, and by extension into gold, well before the US data even lands.

Technical Analysis

Pulling the picture back to daily and weekly charts, the broader trend is still constructive — gold remains in a multi-year uptrend from below $3,000, and the monthly chart shows nothing close to a structural top being broken. What I’m dealing with today is a correction inside that bigger move, not a reversal of it.

On the daily, my own technical readout has RSI(14) sitting almost dead neutral at 51.1, and MACD still printing a modest sell signal at -3.15 — consistent with a market that’s stabilising rather than trending hard in either direction. The moving average picture is the more useful bit: the 20-day sits at $4,309.62 and the 100-day at $4,314.32, both just above where price is trading now, which lines them up as the first real technical resistance cluster. The 50-day at $4,303.39 is basically where price is sitting this morning — a genuine pivot. Zoom out to the 200-day at $4,356.05 and that’s the level that would need to break for this to stop looking corrective.

Intraday, on my M30 and H1 charts, the pattern is a sharp spike low followed by a grinding recovery — classic “stop hunt and reclaim” shape rather than a clean trend continuation. I’d want to see a confirmed close through $4,310–$4,320 before trusting the bounce much further.

Key Levels

  • Immediate resistance: $4,311–$4,320 — classic pivot R1 on my feed sits at $4,311.4, right where the 20/100-day moving average cluster also lines up. This is the level that decides whether today is a genuine recovery or another failed bounce.
  • Next resistance: $4,330–$4,350 — pivot R2/R3 territory ($4,318–$4,331), and the zone where Wednesday’s pre-Fed rally stalled out.
  • Stronger resistance: $4,365–$4,400 — Wednesday’s high near $4,368 plus the highs from last week around $4,403–$4,433.
  • Immediate support: $4,290–$4,298 — the classic pivot point ($4,298.58) and today’s session low so far.
  • Deeper support: $4,272–$4,279 — pivot S2/S3, and roughly where price closed on Wednesday evening.
  • Critical support: $4,230–$4,260 — Wednesday’s post-Fed spike low. A daily close below this zone would put the correction back in control.

My Gold Outlook Today

My base case is that gold spends the European session consolidating $4,280–$4,320, with the real decision made this afternoon once the US data lands. A soft set of numbers — jobless claims ticking up, a weak Philly Fed print, disappointing housing data — would likely take some of the “one more hike is basically guaranteed” premium out of yields and the dollar, and I’d expect gold to press toward $4,330–$4,350 on that relief.

The alternative scenario is a strong data set that reinforces the hawkish Fed narrative. In that case I’d expect the dollar and yields to extend their moves, and gold to struggle to hold $4,290, opening the door back toward $4,260 and, if that breaks, the $4,230 zone from Wednesday’s low. My invalidation level for the bullish recovery case is a clean daily close below $4,260 — below that, I’d treat this bounce as exhausted rather than the start of a new leg up.

What I’m Watching Today

  • 14:30 CEST — US data dump: initial jobless claims, housing starts, building permits and the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index all land together. This is the session’s main event for me.
  • 13:00 CEST / midday London — Bank of England decision: a hold is expected, but a split vote or a surprise could move GBP and the dollar index sharply.
  • DXY and the 100.00 level: as long as the dollar index holds above 100, I think gold’s upside stays capped.
  • Middle East headlines: any fresh escalation around Iran, the Strait of Hormuz or Saudi oil infrastructure remains a genuine intraday wildcard for the safe-haven bid.