Trade smarter. Forex & gold.Gold Outlook: week of October 26, 2026
Quick recap. This is education, not a recommendation to buy or sell.
Last week in one sentence
Spot gold opened near $4,165, traded between about $3,975 and $4,190, and finished near $3,996 — down roughly 4.1% for the week, its biggest weekly drop since June.
What moved it
- Early high, then selling (Monday–Tuesday): gold touched its weekly high near $4,190 early Monday, then slid below $4,150 as traders kept digesting the previous week’s hot inflation reports.
- Oil and the Middle East: renewed US–Iran tensions and attacks on Gulf shipping and energy sites pushed Brent crude above $117 a barrel on Friday, its highest in more than four years. Normally trouble like this helps gold, but higher oil also means higher inflation, which makes further Fed rate hikes more likely, and that weighs on gold.
- Stock market selloff (Thursday): a sharp drop in technology stocks led to forced selling across markets. Gold fell about 2.8% that day, its worst session of the week.
- Below $4,000 (Friday): strong US business surveys and rising consumer inflation expectations added pressure. Gold hit its weekly low near $3,975 Friday morning, its lowest since early June, and bounced around $4,000 into the close.
The bigger picture
COMEX gold futures settled the week at $3,991.10, about 25% below their record high of $5,318 set on January 29, 2026, and down roughly 7.7% for the year. Gold has now fallen two weeks in a row and in seven of the last nine weeks.
Levels people are watching
| Level | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| $4,150–$4,190 | Where selling took over early last week; last week’s high |
| $4,000 | The big round number gold slipped under for the first time since mid-July |
| $3,996 | Friday’s close |
| $3,975 | Last week’s low, the lowest since early June |
Things on the calendar (Oct 26–30)
A big week. The Fed decides on interest rates Wednesday, and key growth and inflation numbers come out the very next morning. All times are Eastern.
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Tue Oct 27, 8:30 AM | Durable goods orders (September) |
| Tue Oct 27, 10:00 AM | Consumer confidence (October) and new home sales (September) |
| Wed Oct 28, 2:00 PM | Federal Reserve rate decision, with the Fed Chair’s press conference at 2:30 PM |
| Thu Oct 29, 8:30 AM | US economic growth (Q3 GDP, first estimate) and PCE inflation (September), the inflation measure the Fed watches most, plus weekly jobless claims |
| Thu Oct 29 | European Central Bank rate decision |
| Fri Oct 30, 8:30 AM | Employment Cost Index (Q3), a measure of wage growth |
Wednesday’s Fed decision is the main event. Markets have been worried about another rate hike before year-end, so what the Fed says about the path ahead could move gold quickly in either direction. Oil prices and news from the Middle East are the other big wild card.
Gold’s average daily range last week was around $62 (about 620 pips by our convention). Fed days can be much wilder than that. Size trades small and use a stop loss — try the lot size calculator.