I walked up to my desk this morning, coffee in hand, and my main monitor was just a wall of green. Gold (XAU/USD) was absolutely ripping, blasting through the previous highs like they weren't even there. It's moments like these that remind me why I quit my marketing job back in 2019. You can't get this feeling from a PowerPoint presentation. The market is pricing in Fed rate cuts, and capital is flooding into hard assets. We're up over 12% year-to-date. But the question on my whiteboard isn't *why* it's moving, but *how* I can trade it.

Let's get straight to the chart. Price is all that matters. For weeks, the major resistance was the zone around $2,900. We saw multiple rejections there. But yesterday's 4H candle was a monster. A clean, high-volume break and close above that level. This wasn't a weak little wick over the top; this was a statement. The market voted, and the bulls won. For me, this is the essence of support and resistance trading. You identify the ceiling, you wait for it to break with conviction, and then you look for it to become the new floor.

A lot of traders get caught up in indicators, but they lag. Price and volume lead. While my friend Alex Volkov thrives on the macro narrative driving this volatility, I keep it simple. The chart told us this was coming. Now, we're in price discovery mode, which is both exciting and dangerous.

Chasing a vertical move is a great way to blow up an account. I learned that the hard way. Twice. My entire game plan is built around waiting for the retest. This is one of those classic swing trading strategies that work time and time again. You let the FOMO crowd push the price up, and you patiently wait for the first sign of profit-taking to get your entry.

• Primary Buy Zone: I'm watching for a pullback to the $2,915 - $2,925 area. This is the retest of the breakout zone.
• My Stop Loss: A hard stop goes below the breakout candle's low, right around $2,895. If we close back below $2,900 on a 4H chart, the trade is invalid.
• Profit Target 1: The recent highs around $2,950. I'll take half my position off there.
• Profit Target 2: Blue sky territory. A measured move puts the next logical target near the psychological $3,000 level.

The breakout happened on significant volume, which is exactly what you want to see. But what's more interesting is that the volume is now declining as we push higher. This is classic exhaustion. It tells me the initial buying frenzy is fading, and a pullback is likely. Proper volume analysis trading isn't about just looking at the green and red bars; it's about understanding the story they tell relative to price. While Marcus Cole is looking at on-chain flows for Bitcoin, I'm looking at the order flow right here on the gold chart, and it's telling me to be patient.

No setup is foolproof. The biggest risk here is a nasty fakeout. If the price slams back down and closes below $2,900, it means this entire move was a liquidity grab to trap breakout traders. That's why the stop loss is non-negotiable. For me personally, the other risk is psychological. If I miss the entry and it just keeps ripping, the urge to revenge trade and jump in late is real. It's my Achilles' heel, and every trade is a test of discipline.

So that's my plan. It's simple, it's based on pure price action, and it has a clear risk defined. The market is giving us a massive opportunity here. Now it's just about execution. Everyone seems to be cheering for rate cuts as a win for the economy, but is this gold rally the canary in the coal mine, signaling the Fed has already lost control of inflation for good?