Gold at 4,274 pullback — extend to 4,200 or range rebound? | XAUUSD Sep 24

I'm Daniel, an active prop trader. My bias on gold today stays to the downside. Since last time the downtrend has continued right in line with that view, dropping 1031 pips into the recent low.

This downtrend structure is still fully intact, and the Tokyo session range has just broken out to the downside. Basically I want to prioritize shorting off a pullback. The question is whether London closes with this trend-style move continuing, or whether it shifts into a trading-range structure and then stages a big rebound during the New York session — that's exactly what I focused on and broke down for you here.

So let's get right into it, starting with the daily chart, which closed yesterday as a big bearish candle. As I explained yesterday, the scenario was that since we had a doji, we should treat this fourth candle as a key level, and overall we needed to expect the market to slip easily into a trading range here. Based on the whole sequence up to that point, I'd said the odds slightly favored a breakout to the upside rather than the downside.

Yesterday's daily closed as a big bearish candle. Since it broke below the prior doji to the downside, my bias for today has flipped to the short side. Right around the London session open today, we saw what looks like a pullback, so it's very likely that shorts are already getting triggered at the daily level.

Working out a measured move from this doji shape, short-term we're likely aiming for 4200, so on the daily my main bias stays bearish with downside pressure. On the flip side, if today's daily candle prints just a small bearish body, or even turns bullish, price gets pulled straight back to this prior doji by a magnet effect. If that plays out, we could easily shift into a sideways trading range that uses this candle as its anchor, so it's worth keeping the opposite scenario in mind too and preparing for a move in the other direction from here.

Next, let's drop down through the timeframes and take a good look at the 1H chart. The prior day's members-only stream went out right around the London session open, so that's roughly the moment I recorded it. On YouTube here, I'll walk you through exactly what I was explaining to the community members at that point, and keep building from there.

So first, what stands out at this point, looking back at the recent price action, is that after a bearish doji here we saw a breakout to the downside, and price carved out a low, forming a reversal low right here. That said, the downside momentum up to here had been very strong, so what we really needed to see was a double test of the lows, or price action that clearly started to lift and raise those lows higher. Since that's exactly the kind of move the market needed, once we got this clean reversal candle, you can clearly see how the control shifted over to the bulls from there.

After that clear bullish reversal candle formed, we got a follow-through bullish candle to confirm it, and since the trend up to this point had obviously been a clean downtrend, direction here was genuinely easy to second-guess. On the flip side, without breaking to lower lows, volatility contracted — a classic setup you often see right before a range breakout. Then it broke upward and the bullish swing extended right up to here.

After that, price failed to reclaim these prior highs. We got a bearish reversal candle, but there was no immediate follow-through to confirm it. Price went sideways into a range, then broke down on this candle, and the bearish swing kept extending right up to broadcast time.

So at that point we had a downtrend, with the recent low already taken out to the downside. So the bias was clearly to the downside. As for how far it could drop, short-term I was watching this wedge formation, and I was estimating the odds of price coming back to test the wedge's origin point.

The cleanest, most obvious read at that moment was this shape right here, so at broadcast time there was a high probability price would at least test this origin. That's why I said the bias was down, and that a move down to this level was the likely scenario. So how did gold actually move in the end?

Exactly as the scenario called for, price first tested this low, and then by yesterday it went on to test an even bigger low. From the New York session open, we saw a sideways range break to the downside, and then into the Tokyo session close, that same sideways range just kept repeating. Looking at the range, from here down to here, gold has now dropped roughly 1031 pips, and the whole move played out exactly the way the scenario laid it out.

So for today's Trading Lab community briefing, I broke down all three of these key points, walking through both the bullish scenario and the bearish scenario for each one in detail. The downtrend is still intact and we're still leaning short — that's the first point. The second is the break below the Tokyo session range, and whether that downside momentum keeps running from here.

The third is to stay alert for a corrective phase near-term, and read the next move off how gold bounces back. Now let's turn back to the real-time chart. Right now we're forming a doji, so odds are high this turns into a time-based correction rather than a sharp move.

The origin of the current down swing is the same trading range that carried over through the Tokyo session. If price breaks back above that range, we'd naturally have to flip our bias to the upside. Keep a close eye on this zone, and let's keep tracking how the current bounce ultimately resolves. That wraps up today's gold session.