Gold stuck in range — break 4,490 or retest 4,385? | XAUUSD Sep 7

Hey, this is Daniel, active prop trader. Gold today is leaning slightly bullish. The big bearish candle broke that key level to the downside, so we had to flip our bias to bearish.

Counting from the swing high, we've dropped all the way down to the Tokyo session low, about 594 pips lower. Right now we're inside a sideways range on the 1H, and the daily chart lacks clear direction too. So the direction this sideways range breaks will decide the shape of the next big swing here.

Will price break out of this range to the upside and resume the uptrend here? Or will it retest the lows and roll back into a fresh downside move? That's the key question I've focused on and walked through in today's analysis.

Alright, let's dive straight in and start with the daily chart. On the gold daily chart, last Friday closed as a bearish doji candle, now confirmed. For the daily chart scenario, I want to walk you through these three key points.

The first point is that the prior daily candle closed as a big bullish bar, so we can judge that a rebound has started on the daily chart level. The second point is this bullish reversal candle right here on the daily. If this bullish reversal and the big bullish candle before it mark a pullback within the larger uptrend, that sets up a fresh push higher from here.

Ideally, today we'd keep following through to the upside and print another bullish candle here. And if we do pull back instead, I mentioned we need to defend at least the 4,330 level here to keep the setup valid. And this final point right here is all about the bearish scenario we're watching.

If a bearish candle forms that wipes out more than 50% of the prior day's rally, I mentioned that with the daily candle forming inside that big bearish candle, price would likely shift into a flat, sideways trading range from here. So with all of those scenarios on the table, let's look at how the daily candle finally ended up closing. As I mentioned earlier, it closed as a bearish doji candle here.

While the 4,330 level is holding for now, if you look closely at the bearish candle's real body, it's already erased about 50% of the prior bullish candle's body, which tells us Basically, even if price keeps climbing from here, it really needs to clear last Friday's high early on. The longer this drags on, the more likely we shift into a sideways range that stays inside last Friday's big bearish candle. That risk builds across the board, and this kind of setup gives you little room to work, so it's one I'd honestly rather sit out and avoid.

For a short-term strategy, note that last Friday's daily candle closed as a doji, a clear indecision signal. And when you factor in that it overlaps with the prior bullish candle too, These highs and lows tend to work as counter-trend levels rather than spots to chase fresh highs or fresh lows, so that's basically how I'm reading them right now. That wraps up the daily chart, so now let's move over to the 1H timeframe.

On the 1H, last weekend I ran a session exclusively for the community, and right here at this red line, around where this small bullish candle formed, I walked members through exactly the points I'm about to cover with you now. Here on YouTube, I want to walk you through those same points and show you exactly what I explained to the community members. At the time of the broadcast, it made more sense to read this as a time-based correction forming within an ongoing uptrend rather than a real reversal.

First, using this bearish candle as the anchor, a sideways range forming and giving us a time-based correction, or a bull flag forming that delivers a price-based correction instead. Since this kind of correction was the more likely scenario, my base case throughout stayed with a continued bullish bias here. And the day before this recording, I also walk back through how the price action played out.

First, the key point is this small bearish doji here — and this bearish doji is a really strong signal. Almost none of these candles overlap. These are doji candles hinting at a sideways range forming inside a strong bullish uptrend.

These reversal candles usually end up setting up a really clean trade in the trend's direction. This candle is no exception either. It builds a sideways range, forms a small minimal double bottom, and then pushes higher once again.

This high also lines up with the level where the earlier breakout attempt failed. Following the price action after the breakout, we get a big bullish breakout candle here. Given how long this uptrend has run, the setup makes this candle a likely buying climax candle here.

And in fact, right after that, it forms a bearish candle, building a sell setup, which in Al Brooks' price action theory would be described as this. This looks like a failed final flag, and price gets dragged back down toward that bearish reversal candle just before. Highs did edge up, but the gains were so slim it clearly turned into a classic climax move.

At the time of the stream, my read was that this bearish reversal candle, formed inside that setup, would then act as the reference candle for the sideways range that followed. Now, within all of this price action, the key focus point was exactly that bearish reversal candle I just mentioned a moment ago. Basically I stayed bullish here, treating a bull flag completion or an upside break after time correction as my main scenario.

I explained that if we saw a strong downside breakout below the low of this bearish reversal candle, then I'd switch over to a bearish bias. Here the key point to stress is that it had to break down strongly. Basically, if it just drifted lower slowly, this bull flag would very likely have kept extending, so I stayed cautious.

That's why I emphasized it needs to break out strongly and decisively, with real conviction behind the move. On top of that, last weekend we had major economic data releases coming up, and it was the weekend, so I told you I wanted to actively avoid trading in that environment. So how did gold move after that broadcast?

Let's follow the price action. Following the price action, once this low broke out strongly to the downside, the bias flipped bearish and we shifted into a downtrend view here. This move itself was quite large, so it wasn't really tradable, but as the following pullback formed and printed a lower high, After that, into the low set in today's Tokyo session, we saw a drop of about 59 dollars, roughly 594 pips.

So that's the picture, and today's community-only stream will focus on these three key points here. Today especially, I want us to focus on how this range plays out. I walked you through both the bullish and the bearish scenarios in detail.

Three key points. First, price is still inside the range, so we need to gauge direction here. Second, the key question is which way this recent range finally breaks.

The big-picture bias is flat here, but from the recent flow, this is a classic sideways range behavior. As I explained, if I had to pick a lean right now, I'd say the bias tilts slightly to the upside. Even this candle, still unconfirmed in the chart image at broadcast time, printed a long upper wick, clearly respecting the top of the range. Right now, as expected, gold stays in its sideways range. That wraps up today's gold update.