Wall Street and Main Street rein in their expectations as markets digest $3,000 gold with key inflation data on deck
NEW YORK (March 22) While the gold market may not have seen the outsized gains of the previous week in percentage terms, the yellow metal did manage to establish $3,000 as solid support, which could be a bigger achievement than another new all-time high in the long term.
Spot gold kicked off the week trading at $2,990 per ounce and dipped down to the weekly low of $2,982 in the early hours of Monday morning. But momentum began to pick up for the yellow metal during the European session, and by 7:30 a.m., spot gold bounced off the $3,000 resistance level.
By the time North American traders started their week, gold was trading right at the $2,990 level once again, whereupon U.S. traders mounted their own challenge of $3,000, ultimately succeeding in breaking through just 15 minutes before the close.
From there, it was off to the races, as gold prices would not revisit the $3,000 support level for the next four days.
After Asian and European traders pushed gold to a fresh weekly high of $3,035 per ounce on Tuesday, this became the near-term ceiling for the yellow metal, with spot gold trading in a narrow $5 range until it once again set a new weekly high of $3,045 per ounce just before 2:00 a.m. Eastern.
Wednesday brought more range trading as markets eagerly anticipated the FOMC rate announcement in the afternoon, which also included updated rate projections and what promised to be a significant press conference from Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.
A few minutes before the central bank release, spot gold was trading at $3,030 per ounce, but once markets got to see the degree of uncertainty in the Fed’s latest projections, they drove gold prices all the way to $3,048 per ounce by the time Powell's presser began, and the weekly high of $3,057 per ounce was set just after midnight on Thursday.
Following an early morning pullback to retest support at $3,030 per ounce, spot gold continued to oscillate between that level and $3,045 before dropping down to $3,025 in the early hours of Friday morning.
This decline approved prescient, as gold's inability to retake its former elevated support at $3,035 per ounce ultimately resulted in the yellow metal’s steepest drop of the week to just below $3,000 half an hour after the North American open.
Gold found plenty of motivated buyers at that level, however, and after popping back up to $3,015 just before 11:00 a.m., spot gold finished the week trading around $3,020 per ounce.
The latest Kitco News Weekly Gold Survey showed a more even attitude towards gold’s price prospects among industry experts and retail traders, with fewer members on both sides predicting higher gold prices for next week.
“I am neutral on gold for the coming week,” said Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at SIA Wealth Management. “It looks like it wants to continue consolidating its recent breakout over $3,000 through to the end of the month. Early April gold could get more active as the US is looking to get more serious about tariffs.”
“Down,” said Adrian Day, president of Adrian Day Asset Management. “A pause in the relentless gold advance would be normal, and indeed healthy. We suspect that it will be only shallow and short-lived. The market seems concerned that the Federal Reserve is in no hurry to cut rates, but that is not what has been driving gold up; there is no change in the fundamental drivers of gold.”
“Pullback expected,” said Mark Leibovit, publisher of the VR Metals/Resource Letter. “Overbought here.”
“Lower,” said Rich Checkan, president and COO of Asset Strategies International. “I expect gold to test below $3,000 at least once before holding. This coming week should be that first test. Long-term, there’s no question where I believe this is going. But short-term, I expect a retracement.”
“Up,” said Darin Newsom, senior market analyst at Barchart.com. “I think it’s safe to pencil this response in for the foreseeable future, regardless of price.”
“One of the more telling aspects of the gold market is recent weekly CFTC Commitments of Traders reports (legacy, futures only) shows the noncommercial net-long futures position continuing to decrease, while total open interest in the market increases,” he added. “This tells us support is coming from those traders/investors using gold as a hedge against global economic and political uncertainty. US Fed Chairman Powell said much the same thing this past week, where the word used most often at the conclusion of the FOMC meeting Wednesday was ‘uncertainty.’ Given this, it doesn’t really matter how high the various gold markets are priced, it will still be viewed as a safe haven.”
“Up,” said James Stanley, senior market strategist at Forex.com. “I don’t think that bulls are done yet and I think we’ll see continued testing of 3k in spot. I do think that 3k can stall buyers for a bit, but I still don’t have greater evidence of more profit taking, so I think we’ll see some continued bullish momentum.”
“It does not seem the gold rally is losing momentum, and it would take a bold trader to call the top and bet against gold at this stage,” said Neil Welsh, head of metals at Britannia Global Markets. “Market participants are well aware of the Federal Reserve’s stance on interest rates, ongoing geopolitical risks, uncertainty surrounding U.S. trade policies and tariffs, and the broader shift away from other asset classes. None of these factors appear likely to change significantly in the near term, making a sharp reversal in gold prices unlikely.
“That said, in a crowded trade, there is always the risk that markets can ‘take the stairs up and the elevator down,’” Welsh warned. “In the short term, the $3,000 level is likely to serve as a key psychological support, attracting dip buyers.”
Adam Button, head of currency strategy at Forexlive.com, wasn’t reading too much into gold’s Friday pullback, but he was noticing some interesting new wrinkles in the market.
“I think it's a really mechanical day in markets today,” he said. “You can see that with a lot of the stocks, nothing's changed. I think a lot of people were looking for $3,000 to take profits, and they got it this week. And China's cooled a bit as well. I think a lot of the money has been coming from China.”
“That said, Turkey imploded this week again,” he added. “That's a big buyer of gold. I'm not sure why you would want to owe lira when you could own gold if you're in Turkey.”
Button said that – in a reversal of the pattern markets have seen over the past few months – gold traders are now worrying about downside risk to gold outside of regular trading hours due to the potential for positive developments.
“Weekend risk has been an interesting part of the Trump administration,” he said. “Stocks have been perpetually weak on Friday, and at this point, the tariff rhetoric is so high that the risks are of some kind of cooling on tariffs. Right now, we're in a position where intense tariffs could go on anyone and tariff headline risk is positive for risk assets, negative for gold.”
Button said that it's normal to see rounds of profit-taking after moves as significant as gold’s recent gains. “Pretty intense move today, but bids came up at $3,000,” he said. “If you look at today's price action, that's the tell, is that buyers were waiting at $3,000 and picked it up.
“It might not be the last test of that, but a weekly close above 3,000 is a major milestone,” Button said. “And we're hours away.”
Button said the other big thing to watch for is broader U.S. dollar weakness. “The missing leg to supercharge gold has been dollar weakness, but we're seeing the signs of creeping dollar weakness this year,” he said. “We've been in a multi-year U.S. dollar bull market. If we were to enter a multi-year U.S. dollar bear market, you'd have a great reason to buy gold.”
This week, 18 analysts participated in the Kitco News Gold Survey, with Wall Street sentiment returning to a much more balanced distribution after this week’s pullback. Seven experts, or 39%, expected to see gold prices rise further during the week ahead, while five analysts, or 28%, predicted a price decline for the precious metal. The remaining six experts, representing 33% of the total, saw further consolidation for gold.
Meanwhile, 372 votes were cast in Kitco’s online poll – another high-water mark for participation in 2025 – with Main Street sentiment also pulling back as investors digested the $3,000 level. 220 retail traders, or 59%, looked for gold prices to rise higher next week, while another 82, or 22%, expected the yellow metal to trade lower. The remaining 70 investors, representing 19% of the total, saw gold prices trending sideways during the week ahead.
A number of leading indicators will be released next week, including the S&P Global flash manufacturing and services PMIs on Monday and U.S. Consumer Confidence on Tuesday, which should give markets a better grasp of where the U.S. economy is heading. But the key release for investors will be the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the core Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, on Friday morning.
Other notable data include New Home Sales on Tuesday, Durable Goods Orders on Wednesday, and Pending Home Sales, weekly jobless claims, and final US Q4 GDP on Thursday.
Marc Chandler, managing director at Bannockburn Global Forex, expects the looming threat of tariffs will continue to support the gold price above $3,000.
“Gold set a record high near $3059.50 last week,” he noted. “The relationship with other markets seems to have weakened as the powerful uptrend has taken a life on of its own. Momentum indicators are stretched, but they do not rule out a new high.”
“Central bank purchases is the center of many narratives, while anecdotal reports continue to point to strong retail demand,” Chandler added. “With the US reciprocal and sectoral tariff announcement expected April 2, gold may be supported with the help of dip buying. Support is seen near $3000.”
Everett Millman, chief market analyst at Gainesville Coins, agreed that the gold market appears to be selling as a way of hedging against good news on Friday afternoon, but he thinks the upside risks remain.
“We've seen this kind of pattern into the weekends, into Fridays, where nobody wants to deal with the uncertainty of what they could be finding out by Monday,” he said. “And that's been to gold's benefit for the most part.”
Millman expects that pattern to play out again in the coming weeks. “I think that we're probably going to see a lot of that this spring,” he said. “Between tariffs and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, I think we're going to keep getting this kind of uncertain feeling until we don't, until there is some kind of resolution one way or the other.”
But with tariffs, he doesn’t expect the Trump administration’s trade policy to settle down anytime soon. “I think we're going to continue to see volatility with that.”
Still, Millman sees the current pullback as a good development within the context of the larger gold rally. “I think everyone will agree that in bull markets, you're going to have pullbacks on the way up,” he said. “It's always a sign of strength, and gold has shown this recently, where it'll sell off one day, and then, within three to four trading sessions, it's right back to pushing new all-time highs. It's done that every single time over the past six months.”
“There's only so much uncertainty that is directly to gold's benefit,” he added. “It is a financial asset, and it's going to experience some of those fluctuations. I do expect to see more of these, at least more frequently than we’ve had so far in 2025, a couple of down days or a down week. For crying out loud, gold did just have eight straight weekly green candles!”
“I think we'll see less of that and more of this, as gold is consolidating above $3000,” Millman said. “If it holds, and I'm relatively confident it will, I think gold is going to have a lot of these rocky, volatile, continuous moves up, but with bigger pullbacks than we've seen.”
Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro, said gold prices have opportunities for significant growth beyond $3,000 per ounce.
“Gold has been in an uptrend since the beginning of March, and the rally accelerated as gold hit new highs at the end of last week, when the spot price hit a new record of $3057,” he noted. “We see this breakout as the start of a new expansionary momentum with an upside potential of $3180/oz, which represents 161.8% of the upside momentum from the start of the year to the February peak.”
Kuptsikevich said the alternative view is also bullish. “According to it, gold has completed a correction since the beginning of the year, following the rally from October 2023 to November 2024,” he said. “The bulls are now targeting the level of $3400 an ounce. This seems like the bulls' target for the coming months.”
“However, we should not lose sight of the fact that the current rally in gold is accumulating extreme overbought conditions on both the daily and weekly timeframes,” he warned. “This disposition leaves room for sharp rallies in the near term on a short squeeze, i.e. liquidation of short positions. However, the pause in growth may well be followed by a broad correction, which we will be sure to report on in the future.”
“I am overall bullish,” said Michael Moor, founder of Moor Analytics. “In a higher time frame, we are still in an overall bull trend from November 2015, and likely in the later stages. Part of this is a prediction I made of $151 minimum, $954 (+) maximum from $2,148.4 – of which we have attained $916.8 so far.”
“On a lower time frame, the trade above 27041 (-.6 of a tic per/hour) has brought in $361.1 of strength,” he added. “The trade above 27247 (-.6 of a tic per/hour) projected this upward $55 minimum, $235 (+) maximum — we have attained $340.5. Decent trade below 30214 (+2.7 tics per/hour starting at 6:00 am), should bring in decent pressure.”
And Kitco Senior Analyst Jim Wyckoff expects gold prices to post new gains next week. “Higher as charts fully bullish and safe-haven demand still solid.”
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