Gold gave back more than 3% after Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole keynote lifted the odds of a September rate hike, pulling bullion off levels that had tested near $4,700 and sending COMEX toward the mid-$4,500s. Silver fell more than 4% toward $67 an ounce. The dollar firmed and the two-year yield jumped, the usual combination that taxes metals that pay no interest. Together with equities and crypto, the move wiped roughly $2.3 trillion of mark-to-market value across the four books, according to post-speech estimates circulating Friday afternoon.
The selloff is the other side of the tape we described when gold slipped below $4,600 into the speech. That dip was positioning. Friday was the catalyst. Warsh said financial conditions are not restrictive and that the Fed still has "work to do" if underlying inflation is not clearly heading to 2%. Markets that had been about 70% priced for an unchanged September meeting flipped toward a hike. See the full policy read-through.
Where the chart sits now
Technicians watching COMEX mark immediate support near $4,450, then $4,380. Resistance is $4,550 and $4,620. A hold of $4,450 into Monday's U.S. open would argue this is a hawkish-speech shakeout inside a still-intact uptrend driven by $40 trillion of public debt and Treasury buybacks. A break of $4,380 would say the debasement trade is being unwound in size, not just marked. Oil, which had already booked a weekly loss into Friday, remains a secondary story: energy is tracking growth-scare talk, not the same rate-path math as gold.
Bitcoin and bullion, briefly divorced
For most of August the two rose together on the same fiscal hedge. After Warsh they both fell, but Bitcoin's drop from above $81,000 to below $78,000 also came with the first spot-ETF outflow in nine sessions. Gold does not have that mechanical bid. It has central-bank buying and ETF metal, both of which can pause when real yields jump. The next test is 11 September CPI, then the 15-16 September FOMC. A soft print would put $4,600 back in play. A hot one would make $4,380 the level that matters. Position size into Monday, not a new thesis.