Gold at 4,660 — break the Tokyo range or pull back to 4,632? | XAUUSD Aug 24

Hey everyone, this is Daniel, your energetic prop trader. Gold is looking bullish today. Since last time, the uptrend has played out exactly as planned, and without breaking any lows, price rallied roughly 892 pips right up to the recent high.

The bigger-picture trend is still bullish, but the Tokyo session has turned into a range and upside momentum is fading, so short-term we need to stay cautious for a pullback. So today's key question is whether price can break out above the Tokyo session high and reclaim that upside momentum. That's exactly what I focused on.

Alright, let's get started right away by taking a close look at the daily chart. On the daily chart, gold closed out last week with a solid bullish candle. For the daily scenario, what I flagged over the weekend was that recent bearish pin bar — that's the candle I was watching closely.

Looking at that bearish pin bar's low, it lines up almost exactly with the high of the sideways range candle that had just broken out to the upside — the levels overlap right there. Given that we've now got this pin bar reversal candle taking shape, the sensible read here is that the breakout pullback is complete — the move where price broke above the sideways range to the upside and has now pulled back and finished that retest. So on the daily chart we stay firmly bullish, and that means on the lower timeframes below the daily we can actively look for long setups and pullback buying opportunities here.

That said, while the bias stays bullish, if the candlesticks keep trading inside the body of this pin bar, then that bearish pin bar starts acting a lot like a doji, and that basically signals the market losing momentum and hesitating right here. So the structure shifts into a sideways range that keeps drifting higher, and for now that makes us hold back and hesitate on any fresh long entries here. In this case, if price breaks out below this sideways range to the downside, that's the first point where we should genuinely flip the daily chart bias to bearish, exactly as I walked you through earlier.

Ultimately, the daily chart printed a bullish candle with clear upside follow-through, so right now there's a high probability this level is being firmly respected by the market as a breakout-pullback zone that buyers are defending. Now, about today's daily candle: as long as it doesn't close as a bearish candle that negates last Friday's bullish push higher, I think we can comfortably keep our bias to the upside and continue looking for long opportunities from here.

That said, when it comes to actually entering longs on the daily, the cleanest approach is to wait for a bearish reversal candle to confirm, or to place a stop-buy above the highs. So in terms of how you play this, I'd say the right move is to look for your long entries on the intraday timeframes, meaning day-trade level and below. And if today's daily candle happens to reject last week's rally and closes back inside this pin bar, then the odds of this level acting as a doji line go up again.

If that plays out, I think we'd need to flip our bias here once more and reassess the whole picture, because that would seriously change the near-term outlook. Right now, bias stays bullish. Now let's drop down a timeframe and take a look at the 1H chart.

On the 1H chart, last weekend I sent out an update to our community members right around this red line, where a bullish doji candle had just formed here. Here on YouTube, let me pick out a few key points from what I was explaining exclusively for our community members. At the time of that stream, my read was crystal clear: we're in a strong uptrend, so I'm fully bullish here.

I explained that until we broke below the lows, longs should stay the priority. As for the process that led me to that call, price action stayed very easy to read. This was a textbook uptrend structure taking shape.

First, this bullish reversal candle triggered upside follow-through, and after what looked like a climax candle we printed a doji here, marking the limit of the upward stretch. We got a slight breakout above the prior high here, and price is now printing a higher high. After that a sideways range formed, and inside that trading range we're seeing a breakout pullback play out here.

Since price printed two lows right at this lower bound, if we classify it more precisely, this is really a double bottom pullback structure taking shape here. And right after price broke out above the high of the doji candle, we then formed a candlestick with a relatively large real body, confirming that move. So inside our community, I'd already flagged that this uptrend was very likely to keep pushing higher from here.

So how did gold actually move after that stream? The uptrend kept running just as expected. Reading the wave structure, the lows are clearly stepping up and the highs keep rising too.

The uptrend is unfolding in an ideal shape and still running strong right now. It's rising just as the scenario predicted, from that earlier high all the way up to the current high at broadcast. Just counting this move alone, we've got 892 pips, an 89-dollar rally confirmed right here on the chart.

So for today's community-only breakdown, as I mentioned earlier, we're centering it on this trading range built during the Tokyo session. I'll walk through both bullish and bearish scenarios via three points. First point, the uptrend continues but upward momentum is fading.

Second point, direction is weak so watch for a short-term pullback. I break down in detail exactly why this corrective pullback is likely, based on the market structure. Third point: stay cautious with new long entries until a strong rally is confirmed.

In short, avoid jumping in chasing a bullish follow-through move up here — skip those trades. Let's look at the live chart more closely — just when it seemed to break above the Tokyo session range, the follow-through was weak, so we're still stuck in a tight range now. We're still ranging, but the bigger trend is intact, so I'll stick with a bullish bias on gold for now. That wraps up today's gold analysis for you all.