Gold spent the summer punishing the people who owned it. The metal – tracked by the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE:GLD) – broke below $4,000 in mid-July and gold mining stocks entered August down more than 13% for the year.
Then something completely changed the bullion’s narrative.
John Roque, technical strategist at 22V Research, told clients Thursday that gold has finally cleared the level that capped every rally this year.
That level is $4,380 an ounce. Gold failed at $4,380 more than once this year, so clearing it removes the ceiling chart readers were watching.
The confirmation is not complete. Gold futures traded above $4,500 Thursday, trading above the 200-day moving average for the first time since early June.
“Gold is above former resistance at 4380, and it is a buy on any / all pullbacks. A reasonable first upside objective is 4800,” Roque said.
The Intervention That Lasted One Day
The reason gold cleared $4,380 this week starts in a market that has nothing to do with metals.
On Wednesday morning, the Treasury Department said it would at least double the size of its buyback operations in bonds maturing between 10 and 30 years, raising the cap from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation from Sept. 9 through Nov. 4.
It worked for about six hours. The 30-year Treasury yield fell 9 basis points to close at 5.196%.
By Thursday morning, it was gone. The 30-year climbed as much as 7 basis points to 5.27%, essentially the exact level it held before the announcement. The 10-year returned to 4.70%.
The Treasury also confirmed Wednesday that total public debt outstanding had crossed $40 trillion for the first time.
This was the Treasury’s second intervention in three weeks, after a joint currency operation with Japan on Aug. 1 to arrest the yen’s slide.
Gold is watching every move Bessent makes.
The Fed Is The Trade Gold Is Actually Making
Through late July, the market genuinely expected tightening. CME FedWatch had put the probability of a September increase above 82%.
Then the July jobs report landed on Aug. 7 and showed the American economy shed 23,000 jobs, versus forecasts of an increase of about 83,000.
Consumer inflation arrived in line at 3.4% annually. September odds fell to about 41.9%, and have since drifted near 35%.
Prediction markets have gone further. On Polymarket, the chance of a September hike sits at around 25%, and the probability of any increase in 2026 has slipped to roughly 50%, down from 64% on Aug. 6.
Minutes from the July meeting, released Wednesday, showed several officials arguing that tightening would likely be needed if inflation failed to decline.
Yet there was no clear commitment from the Fed to hike rates as early as September.
Chair Kevin Warsh keeps promising to deliver price stability. He has not once signaled when and how.
Photo: Shutterstock
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