Gold at 4,138 lower-high — break above or drop to 4,054? | XAUUSD July 10

Hey, this is Daniel, your energetic prop trader. Gold is in a downtrend right now, so I'm biased to the downside, but overall I'm expecting price to head back up and retest yesterday's high once more. Yesterday the uptrend continued exactly as I mapped out in my scenario, and off the pullback I flagged right after the last broadcast, price rallied roughly 441 pips from there.

Right now, even though price has broken below yesterday's active uptrend line, the price action is showing early signs that the market may still be gearing up for another attempt to test the highs from here. So as always, let's move straight into a detailed look at the daily chart. Yesterday's daily candle on gold closed as a bullish candle, printing green.

We'd mapped out both a bearish and a bullish scenario in both directions, and in the end it's the bearish scenario that ended up playing out here. The bearish scenario points to a sideways range forming, anchored on that prior bearish doji candle as the reference bar. That's exactly the shape that played out here.

The prior day's candle was bullish, yet it never managed to cleanly break out above that level. So as of today, we're seeing price action where the highs are actually getting pushed lower on a recent basis, a clear lower-high sequence. So at the very least, the next directional move should become clear once price breaks out — either above yesterday's daily bullish candle high or below its low.

Whichever side gives way first will define where we go from here. There are two ideal scenarios here. The first, the bullish case: what yesterday's candle lacked was enough upside momentum to fully break out through this level cleanly.

If today prints a solid, strong bullish candle and breaks out cleanly through this level, that fills the missing piece from yesterday. From there, price starts carving out higher lows, and the whole setup shifts into a situation where the bulls can pile into longs far more easily. On the flip side, even under the bearish scenario, there's a case where our footwork stays light and we can react quickly in either direction, whichever way price ends up breaking.

Here's the reasoning: if today's daily candle closes with volatility shrinking step by step, like one, two, three, then heading into next week, whether we get a gap up or a gap down doesn't really matter, price tends to run hard in whichever direction it breaks out. I'd also expect fewer false breakouts here, so that's the kind of setup we're looking at right now. With that in mind, let's move on to the 1H chart now.

Yesterday's community-only stream happened right as this big bullish candle on the red line closed. Let me share part of what I broke down in that session here on YouTube too. The first key point is that we've seen higher highs alongside higher lows in the most recent price action.

From this price action, the short-term trend is clearly upward right now, so we need to build our trades around that uptrend as the main axis of our approach. And here we shouldn't just look at the shape of the trend on its own, we also need to assess the momentum behind it, so that our directional bias becomes even more solid and reliable. First off, that initial upswing right at the start was very strong.

And with the big bullish candle that closed by broadcast time, the second upswing also showed real strength. So going forward, my base scenario was to give priority to pullback buying and look for entries on the dips. But at the same time, we also need to gauge how much pressure the bears are putting on, not just the bulls.

For example, say the drop here comes down with two big bearish candles, and then the bounce afterward — which honestly doesn't happen much after this — cancels it right back out with two big bullish candles over the same two-hour stretch. Both sides look strong here, but the power balance is actually even, so what you really end up with is nothing more than a simple V-shaped recovery. In the same way, it's important to strengthen not just one direction but the opposite move too, and honestly this correction here is really easy to read and clearly defined on the chart.

Up to this point the downtrend kept running, with the lows getting pushed down quite significantly, and then after those lower lows started to narrow in and tighten up, we saw a strong bullish swing form here. Looking at the pullback that followed, you can see plenty of overlapping candles, and inside it there were quite a few doji forming too. When it plays out like this, the corrective selling pressure is really weak, which confirms that the bulls remain firmly in control here.

And when you follow the price action after that, right here you can see a two-candle sideways range forming across this zone. After that false breakout, this failed break to the downside sets up a really clean buying opportunity here. So this really was a valid spot to be looking for a long entry setup here.

Even after that, until price clearly broke the trendline or the channel, we should have kept a bullish bias and stayed prepared for a scenario where gold pushes on to make new highs. So how did gold actually play out? On the 1H chart, price formed another pullback right after the broadcast, and from there it pushed up toward the high by $44, which works out to roughly 441 pips, playing out exactly as the scenario called for.

Right now, just as I mentioned at the start, price has broken out below the previous day's rising trendline, right here. If price drops below the previous day's pullback level here, we'd flip into a downtrend, but it's still a bit unclear. If this keeps acting like a double bottom, then just as I mentioned right at the start, a move that tests this high is naturally something we need to consider too.

As for today's gold analysis — well, let me correct myself — let me also share a few key points from what I'm covering exclusively for our community members today. First off, this is a market where direction gets choppy. Looking at the daily chart, it's clear a breakout move is favored, but we're still in the phase of confirming that direction.

The battle at the range's end, judging the breakout direction, and the mindset of only hunting the clear opportunities. Based on these three points, I broke down today's full strategy and how things could develop, exclusively for our community members. That wraps up today's full gold analysis session.