XAU/USD: Gold Extends Slide into Third Day, Breaks $3,350 in Quiet Trading. What’s Next?

Technical bros are enjoying it — no major news has shifted the spotlight to pattern recognition, price action, and candlesticks.

📉 Gold Prices Tumble

• Gold prices XAUUSD were trading lower Friday morning with markets focusing more on the technical side of things rather than the stream of economic news. Simply because there aren’t many exciting events going down today (and Thursday, for that matter) to keep investors parsing headlines.
• Instead, it’s time for technical analysts to show what they’re made of. Apparently, it’s the bears’ time to dominate the gold market as the shiny metal already lost about 0.7% in the early hours today and is on track to wrap up its third day of losses in a row.
• Bullion prices dipped to a session low of $3,342 from an opening price of $3,370 per ounce. It’s also en route to snap a two-week winning streak as it’s staring at a 2.5% weekly loss.

💪 Gold vs Big Boys: Major Win

• The long-term trend, however, remains pretty solid. With markets in the final stretch of the first half of 2025, gold has outperformed virtually every megacap asset out there. A whopping 28% — that’s what gold has returned so far this year, outshining the S&P 500’s 1.9% return and Bitcoin’s 12% return.
• More recently, on Wednesday, a big event threw some shade on gold. The Federal Reserve maintained its interest rate at 4.5%, citing increased inflation expectations and a lot of uncertainty coming from Trump’s tariffs.
• And with rising inflation expectations, the US dollar got a lift, which led to gold prices slipping — high rates eat into gold’s non-yielding properties as they raise the opportunity cost. In other words, traders and investors flock to fixed income where they can get a guaranteed return instead of betting that gold will appreciate in value.

👀 What to Look Out for Next Week

• Against that backdrop, where’s gold headed next? Technically, there’s a double-top resistance at the most-recent high of $3,450 per ounce. If bulls are able to break out of it, the next possible resistance could be the all-time session high of $3,500 per ounce.
• Also, gold is sitting comfortably above all three key simple moving averages (SMAs). The 50-day line at $3,317, the 100-day line at $3,139, and the 200-day line at $2,901. Any technical analysis book will tell you that the upside trend is still very much intact.
• But there’s also economic news that goes out and can knock prices off kilter. This said, pay attention to next week’s events and reports. Here are the major ones: Fed boss Jay Powell speaks Tuesday and Wednesday. US GDP data comes out Thursday and the Fed’s favorite inflation measure, PCE, will be out Friday.