Gold at 4,253 support vs 4,335 — breakdown or range hold? | XAUUSD Sep 15

I'm Daniel, an active prop trader. My bias on gold today is to the downside. The prior bearish swing kept extending, dropping 498 pips, and now, right on cue, we're seeing the rebound I laid out in my scenario.

From the point where we overshot the daily-chart low, we've now seen a 364-pip rebound. Right now price is breaking out to the downside, cleanly out of the trading range that formed during the Tokyo session. We're back inside a downswing, and recently price has been trying to test yesterday's low.

The big question today is whether we'll actually reach that prior-day low, or whether we'll hold the daily range and reverse from here. That's exactly what I focused on explaining today. So let's jump right in, and as always, we'll start by looking at the daily chart.

On the gold daily chart, yesterday's candle closed as a doji with a bearish body. As I've been saying, the daily scenario has these two candles acting as our reference candles, and as of yesterday, that sideways range was likely to keep holding. Now, for the rebound, the lower wick of this candle is a spot where buying pressure tends to kick in, and the prior candle is a bullish doji.

I mentioned that these four price levels tend to draw attention as key points, and factoring in the recent price action, this zone is also easily seen as a range that traders keep watching. When it was all said and done, we did see a sharp move lower on the short-term timeframe, but price carved out a long lower wick and rallied back, returning right into the range. So just as the scenario laid out, we're still in a sideways trading range with no clear breakout.

As for how things play out from here, the recent candles are all overlapping right now, so we're still stuck in a market with very little directional conviction. Given this whole sequence of price action, I'd expect the same sideways range to keep dragging on, and the four key prices from yesterday's daily candle are likely to be watched as significant levels here, so a continued sideways range is really the base case to keep in mind. Also, since it's still only Tuesday here in Japan time, if we do get a downside breakout, this is a market environment that pairs nicely with a swing-style approach — but only for shorts you enter on the shorter timeframes.

So if you're looking to let your profits run, that's definitely something worth keeping in mind here. Alright, let's move down now and take a proper look at the 1H chart together. For the 1H chart, I gave the community members a live breakdown yesterday, right around where this red line closed.

Here on YouTube, I want to walk you through exactly what I was explaining to the community members yesterday. My overall view was that we were still in the middle of a downward swing continuing, so short term I told everyone I was leaning bearish, and fundamentally the bias stays bearish, right around this daily chart low here. The prior daily low sat right around here, and we saw an overshoot along with what looked like a climax candle forming, so it was a spot where price was likely to stop falling and bounce back for now.

If you're already short here, the bias stays down so you can keep letting that trade run for now, but the daily chart shows price sitting at a level where a bounce back up is pretty likely from here. So if you're looking for a fresh entry from here, I explained the plan is basically to hunt for longs. I also walked through the price action that led me to this call.

Since yesterday was Tuesday, we also looked back at the price action from last weekend. First, what mattered in Friday's price action last week was the move that came after a sideways range formed off these two anchor candles. First it broke out to the downside, then the pullback candle formed — that bearish doji was effectively the pullback, showing as a single candle on the 1H chart.

After that pullback, price went and tested the low first, before anything else. After that it reversed, and that same candle gave us a downside follow-through and turned into a rare, sharp bullish reversal candle. The move was so sharp that on the 1H alone you really couldn't have justified any entry here.

Or you'd have shorted right here and gotten stopped out, but in my case I trade off the daily, the 1H, and the 5-minute together. Since the timeframe I really weight is the 5-minute, this actually gave you plenty of room to work with. After that, price came back to retest the level that had been in focus through the prior day, and right here it printed a bearish reversal candle, which on its own already gives you a valid sell setup.

The actual entry trigger came off this doji candle right here. Now, this doji candle broke out to the downside as the market closed out last week, but what I really want you to notice is right here. The drop nearly matches the range of that doji candle itself.

A doji like this tends to drop a similar range, so it helps gauge the post-breakout move. I figured this was worth sharing since it's a useful reference too. Then on Monday, right at the Tokyo session open, the 1H candle closed as a doji, an open-equals-close bar, so conditions were set up for a sideways range to develop next.

And sure enough, one candle, then two, printed as inside bars, with their bodies fully contained, giving us a clear sideways range. After that, the upside breakout failed, a false breakout formed, and price rolled over to probe the downside. In reality, this level turned into a breakout pullback, and from there a full downswing was forming.

We were right in the middle of that downswing, which is exactly what I laid out in yesterday's community-only session. So we're in a downswing, meaning the short-term bias stays firmly to the downside. As I explained earlier, the daily chart has been stuck in a range for a while now.

Around the daily low right here, price had printed a lower wick at broadcast time, so I mentioned it was likely to bounce and rebound from this area soon. So how did gold move afterward? Just as I called it, right after the broadcast we saw a $49 drop, about 498 pips lower, playing out exactly on plan.

After confirming this kind of downside move, we got a very typical setup, breaking out below the daily low to the downside. Basically, after that overshoot to the downside, we saw a reversal form, and the rebound that followed spans roughly 64 dollars measured from this low here. In pip terms that's a solid 641-pip advance, playing out exactly as the scenario mapped it out.

In today's community-only session, I walked through these three key points, covering both the bullish and bearish scenarios in detail. First, we broke below the Tokyo session range, so the bias is now bearish. The downtrend is still intact, but watch for a bounce near the lows, so keep a bearish bias while being cautious about holding positions long term.

I walked through all of that in detail, so you'd have the reasoning behind it. Right now price is testing the doji that marked the start of yesterday's bounce, and after that big bearish candle closed, we're at the stage of gauging just how far this rebound can actually run. With 23 minutes left before the 1H candle closes, I'll be watching closely to see exactly how it ends up printing. That wraps up today's gold update.