(Kitco News) – It was another wild week for precious metals traders and global markets alike as Trump's trade war continued to dominate the price action. 

Spot gold kicked off the week trading at $3,338.38, and for the first two days of trading, nothing stood in its way. The yellow metal quickly rose to $3,385 on Sunday evening, and by the North American market open, it was already trading at $3,420 per ounce, albeit on thin Easter Monday volumes. 

The Asian market then took the reins, driving spot gold from $3,417 per ounce at 8:00 p.m. EDT all the way to its new all-time high of $3,500 per ounce by 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday, one of the most impressive single-day performances in its multi-year bull run. 

But this hitherto unobtainable peak proved unsustainable, as a combination of profit taking and softening rhetoric from the Trump administration started gold's steep descent, which saw it trading back down near $3,410 per ounce by the North American equity open, and as low as $3,318 by 6:00 p.m. 

Asian traders managed to push spot gold back up to $3,386 per ounce on Tuesday evening, but a sharp selloff from that level saw the yellow metal slide once again, and half an hour after Wednesday’s North American open, it hit the weekly low of $3,270 per ounce. 

Again, Asian traders pushed prices higher, but this time spot gold could only top out at $3,362 per ounce before it settled into a relatively narrow range between $3,320 and $3,365 for the duration of Thursday’s trading. 

Early Friday morning saw gold's final sharp sell-off, with the yellow metal falling from $3,323 shortly after midnight Eastern all the way to $3,289 by 2:00 a.m., and down to $3,278 by the North American open. 

After one final dip to test the weekly low near $3,270 per ounce, spot gold clawed its way back up to the $3,300 per ounce level to close out the North American session and the week's price action.

The latest Kitco News Weekly Gold Survey showed only a minority of industry experts and retail traders retaining their bullish bias toward gold prices after the yellow metal’s multi-session selloff.

Adrian Day, president of Adrian Day Asset Management, believes the near-term trend is downward, but the factors that pushed gold prices to $3,500 are still in place.

“The possibility of more concessions in the US-China tariff war, as well as increased concerns about a recession, will pressure gold in the near term, so DOWN for next week,” Day said. “But the drivers of gold demand for the past year and more remain, perhaps only a slowing in demand growth, so the pullback may be short and shallow.”

“Up,” said Rich Checkan, president and COO of Asset Strategies International. “The profit-taking runs its course this week, and gold starts inching its way back up again to the recent highs near $3,500 next week. Weakness in the U.S. dollar, uncertainty over geopolitics, tariffs, and the Fed all contribute to put wind in gold’s sails this coming week.”

Kevin Grady, president of Phoenix Futures and Options, was dissecting gold’s recent dramatic moves up and down on Friday.

“The $500 up in gold was lightning-fast,” he said. “You have to watch the volumes, and you have to watch the open interest, because open interest shows new positions coming into the market. When you see massive open interest, you see a lot of margin increases from the exchange, but you didn't see any margin increases. $500 up and all the way down here, no margin increases.”

“I think a lot of speculators came in, they saw the market, ‘Hey, it's going up every morning! I wake up, it's up a hundred bucks. Let me just get a long and start to trade this.’ I think that's why we saw these dramatic downturns,” he said. “When you see gold go up $100 a day, $120 a day, it's not surprising when it goes down $120.”

“I look at the volumes,” Grady added. “I don't think the volumes are very robust. So it says to me that there's not a lot of serious sticky players. At $500 up, I think you saw a lot of weak hands in there trading, and that's why you see these big, dramatic drawdowns.”

Grady now sees $3,000 as key support, even though the market is still well off that level. “I think $3,000 is going to be the main support,” he said. “When the market traded right up to $3,000, it repelled it pretty quickly. Then, when it broke, it just exploded through it. So I'm going to use that as a strong support level. I know that's hundreds of dollars away, but as far as I'm concerned, that is a major support.”

Grady is also looking for confirmation of how the trade war has really impacted gold and Treasuries.

“We'll see some of the data when it starts coming out, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see that China was selling U.S. treasuries and buying gold,” he said. “A lot of people were saying, ‘Oh, I don't think they're going to do that. Why would you sell us treasuries, because you have to buy something else, and what else are you going to buy?’ But at the same time that the Treasury and the bond market was getting hit, you saw gold exploding. The thing is, both of those positions get them away from the United States.”

“That's why I would not be surprised if we find that China was selling U.S. treasures. They know what it’s going to spark, and they know what's going to back Trump off. China's hoping that with a massive sell-off in equities, people are going to be all over Trump and force him to back down.”

“Both of those positions, selling U.S. treasuries and buying gold, moves them away from the US dollar, and it also hurts the U.S. by, spiking our interest rates.”

For next week, Grady expects gold to trade around its current levels until the market gets concrete progress on trade. “I think what's going to happen next week, I think you're going to see at least one trade deal come through,” he said. “That's what the markets are hoping. They're waiting for the first one to come through, whether it's Japan. Whether it's North, I'm sorry, South Korea. Vietnam, India. I think once they see that happening, I think you're going to see a pop in U.S. equities.”

“Gold's kind of trading on its own right now,” he added. “The strong hands are underneath the market. I don't think they're chasing it up like this. They realize the same thing, that it's going up on speculative volume. What you saw even the other day, as the market sells off, there is some support below the market.”

This week, 13 analysts participated in the Kitco News Gold Survey, with a majority of Wall Street now adopting a bearish posture towards the precious metal. Six experts, or 46%, expected to see gold prices rise during the week ahead, while seven analysts, representing the remaining 54%, predicted price declines for the yellow metal. None saw gold holding steady next week.

Meanwhile, 316 votes were cast in Kitco’s online poll, with Main Street also abandoning its long-running bullish bias. 152 retail traders, or 48%, looked for Related news