Gold stuck below $4,200: geopolitics keeps inflation alive ahead of CPI

Gold spent Tuesday’s Asian session going nowhere in particular. It traded below $4,200, around $4,184 on FXStreet’s daily chart, consolidating its rebound from two-month lows. FXStreet analyst Dhwani Mehta describes a range-bound market caught between geopolitics that keeps energy prices high and a Federal Reserve that is watching them.

Geopolitics, the inflation channel

FXStreet lists two sources of tension:

• The Middle East. Flights at Riyadh’s airport have been suspended until Saturday after a Houthi missile attack that killed one person, according to a Guardian report FXStreet cites.
• Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has accused Russia of continuing to strike energy infrastructure after President Trump said Moscow had agreed to an “energy ceasefire”. Bloomberg, via The Business Times, describes that ceasefire as crumbling.

Each of these would once have been simply good for gold. Now they cut both ways. Fear brings safe-haven buying; but higher energy prices keep inflation alive, and inflation keeps the Fed on course for another hike. That is why gold can fall on a day of bad geopolitical news, as it did on Monday — see Kitco close. Holding it up, FXStreet says, were a softer dollar, oil and yields during the Asian session, weaker Asian stocks and growing bets that the Fed holds in October.

Société Générale’s base case

FXStreet quotes analysts at Société Générale on Wednesday’s CPI. If core inflation comes in at the 2.5% consensus, they expect “no rate hike this month, but a very strong chance of one in December and another in Q1.” In other words, even an in-line number would not end the hiking cycle in the bank’s view — it would simply push the next move to December.

The chart: below every major average

On the technical side, FXStreet describes gold as bearish while it trades below its main simple moving averages:

As reported by FXStreet, 13 October 2026.

A moving average smooths out daily noise to show the trend; trading below all three means the trend is down over every common timeframe. An RSI of 45 is neutral — neither oversold nor overbought. The trendline near $4,000 is the line FXStreet treats as the support for the longer-term bull market, which lines up with the $4,000 level other analysts are watching in Gold’s $4,000 floor holds.

Every figure here is as reported by the publications listed under Sources, at the time they reported it. Prices move; the live gold price has the current one. Nothing on this page is investment advice.