Brent crude touched close to $100 a barrel in the week before this interview, and Gary Wagner says that one price is what decides the Federal Reserve's next move and gold's direction with it.
Most commentary treats rising bond yields as the thing that hurts gold. Wagner put a year-to-date chart of yields, oil and gold on the screen and showed all three rising together, and he says oil is the reason.
"When crude goes up, it affects everything. It's a huge factor in terms of the ability to cause havoc vis-à-vis inflation ticking higher."
Wagner edits TheGoldForecast.com, where he publishes daily technical forecasts on gold, and the show's own title credits him with calling the low that started the current rally.
I listened to the full interview so you can skip it. 30 minutes of audio, 13 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 charts that matter.
👤 Guest: Gary Wagner, Editor of TheGoldForecast.com, who publishes a daily technical forecast on gold and trades the metal himself
🎙️ Host: David Lin, a former BCA Research macroeconomics researcher who now runs The David Lin Report
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on YouTube (David Lin) · recorded 9 September 2026
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 30 min | ✅ Time saved: 17 min
Key Takeaways
Oil, not bond yields, is the variable Wagner is watching for gold
He says gasoline and diesel are only the visible part of it, because most of what the US and Canada manufacture is made using petroleum
He puts the odds of a Fed hike next week high and rising, and says the CME's rate-hike gauge had moved to "about 60%"
Gold's absolute support sits where two technical levels overlap — the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the summer rally and the 50-day moving average, both at roughly the same price
A break of the base he sees near $4,400 means "gold comes down another $100" to that overlap
The selloff took $1,600 off an ounce of gold and the rally has won $800 of it back, which he reads as a market that has turned bullish over weeks but not over years
This is not 2011 repeating — that correction ran for years and halved the price, while this one has already found a floor and built a base
The signal he says changed everything was one candle on 5 August, the day gold closed back above its 50-day moving average for the first time since March
Gold needs to take out $4,750 on the next rally or he starts watching for a lower low
Crude's uptrend is accelerating rather than fading, measured by candle size on a Heikin-Ashi chart, with resistance at $98.50 to $99 on the futures contract
Two things together would make him bearish on gold: a Fed that hikes next week and again in December, and crude turning back down
1. Oil Is the Inflation Trigger
Wagner opened on crude rather than on gold. The move he describes began about a week and a half before the interview and had carried Brent to within reach of a level it had not seen in years.
Cash Brent "actually kind of touched near $100 a barrel", with futures just below that, a level he said markets had not seen for some time
The inflation channel he describes is not the pump price. Gasoline and energy bills are the visible part; his point is that most of what North America manufactures and sells is produced using petroleum, so a crude move raises input costs across unrelated goods
He treats that breadth as the reason crude beats every other inflation input. "So it's a huge factor in terms of the ability to cause havoc vis-à-vis inflation ticking higher"
By the time he pulled up his own chart the numbers had moved again: "Brent's already above 100. WTI is at 97"
2. Why He Expects a Hike
David Lin put the week's data calendar and the market's own forecasts on screen before asking what the Fed does. The two men disagreed on air about which release landed on which day.
The host's numbers were the show's research, not Wagner's. Lin said the market expected CPI at 0.4% month-over-month against 0.1% the month before, and 3.4% year-over-year, in line with the previous month
Lin's own reading of those forecasts was that the gasoline and diesel spike had not yet reached the data, because the surge began only in the previous week and a half and the print being released covered August
Wagner said a hike is close to settled. His reasoning is mechanical rather than predictive: raising rates is "the one tool that the Fed has to try to address inflationary pressures because that slows the economy down and therefore it reduces the potential for inflation to spike higher faster"
He cited the CME's rate-hike gauge as evidence the market had already moved. "I believe it now could be at about 60%. Maybe a little higher." In his own description of the tool, the Federal Reserve polls rate traders such as bond traders to get a reading on where yields are going, and weights that heavily
On the calendar itself the two contradicted each other. Lin said PPI was out on 10 September and CPI on 11 September; Wagner said CPI was on the 10th and PPI on the 11th, twice adding "I believe" and "if I've got that right". Both agreed the releases landed before the following week's FOMC meeting
Crude is what he thinks removes the Fed's remaining discretion. "I think that's going to force the hand of the Fed", and if the committee has not already decided, a higher oil price "only increases the probability that that will be the outcome next week"
3. Gold and Oil in Tandem
Lin overlaid a year-to-date WTI chart on gold and asked Wagner to explain the mechanism rather than just the correlation.
Wagner agreed on the relationship and put a limit on it. "They're absolutely moving in tandem. The correlation is really high" — though he added it is not dollar for dollar or percent for percent
The mechanism runs through inflation and the dollar together. Crude is a large potential source of an inflation spike, gold does well while inflation is rising, and the dollar has been falling, which he called the perfect environment for the metal
The rally he is describing started from a specific low. Gold dropped to 4,000, moved up considerably off that low and was, at the time of recording, near 4,450 on the December futures contract
Lin pushed back on the tandem story with the last two weeks. Gold had been flatlining around $4,400 while oil kept climbing, which he put to Wagner as a divergence rather than a correlation
4. Where Yields Fit In
Lin added the 10-year Treasury yield as a third line and argued it tracks oil more closely than gold — higher oil raises the odds of a hike, which pushes yields up, and higher yields have historically worked against gold.
Wagner accepted the premise and then stated the opposite of the textbook relationship. "You see a high correlation between yields moving higher and gold moving higher"
He read the chart as a volatility story rather than a correlation story. The exaggerated spike nine or 10 trading days earlier was, in his account, larger than anything recent, and what the three overlaid series show him "more than anything" is how volatile the market has become
He did not reconcile that with the historical relationship Lin described. The host's framing — that real yields and gold move in opposite directions — went unanswered, and Wagner moved to the technicals
5. Gold's Base at $4,400
Wagner switched to his own screen and a daily candlestick chart running back to the all-time high set at the turn of the year.
The decline he is working from is large. Gold fell from 5700 to about 4,000, a move of roughly 1,700, before the rally that began in the middle of July added about 800 — "call it $750, $760 higher" — and then corrected
The correction was deep but, by his rules, healthy. It exceeded a 50% retracement of that rally and stopped between the 50% and 61.8% levels; only two closes, on 1 and 2 September, finished below the 50% line, and the wick of one candle last Wednesday came close to 61.8% without the body following
The shape before the breakout was a compression triangle. After the record high, a series of lower highs formed what he called an asymmetrical triangle, and the break out of it is the move now in progress
The level he keeps returning to is roughly $4,400, which he says has twice found buyers. "So I think that's a really strong level of support"
Below it, one price matters more than the rest. "Major support comes by the confluence of the 61.8% fib retracement and the simple 50 day moving average" — the two align at the same point, and reaching it "would mean gold comes down another $100"
He had expected that test and then stopped expecting it. Two strong down days took gold from 4760 to about 4370, which he called quite a move in a short period; he thought a further slide was probable, and then the market recovered the following day
6. Why $4,800 Held It Back
Asked in hindsight why $4,800 was such a strong ceiling, Wagner said the answer is not on the chart.
There is no clean technical explanation for it. A dashed line he drew does not line up with the tops or the bottoms around it, which he said leaves a behavioral reading rather than a structural one
His explanation is speed, not price. "I think that it was more psychological in terms of it getting overheated very quickly"
The arithmetic of the round trip is what he says matters. "I mean, if you look at the selloff, $1,600 taken away from an ounce of gold, and then you look at the recovery, $800 gotten back"
He splits the verdict by time frame. "That tells me that we haven't overcome the bearish market sentiment long-term" — while gold trading above its 50-day moving average tells him the short term has turned bullish
The long-term case needs two things in order. Support has to hold near $4,400, and the rally that follows has to take out the high near 4760; a lower high than that, he said, does not bode well for the bulls
7. Not a Repeat of 2011
Lin noted that gold took about 20 days from 4 August to peak around 25 August, climbing 15%, and gave back about half of that in roughly half the time. Wagner's answer reached back fifteen years.
His first read of the symmetry is support, not weakness. "Well, it tells me there is potential support at about 4,400"
The 2011 analogy is the one he rules out. In 2011 into 2012 gold flirted with 18 to 1900, dropped to about 1537, tried to base there and then dropped again — a multi-year correction that cut the price in half
The difference he draws is that this correction already found its floor. A record high will typically produce a steep correction "when the opportunity presents itself", and this one gave back 1,700 and then built a base
Two overhead levels now carry resistance in his reading: a prior low sitting just above an earlier high, and the unsustainable high itself
The test he has set is explicit. "If we would see gold back up, what I would want to see from a bullish point of view is it would need to take out this record, this last high that came in at $4750." A lower high than that and "I would look to see if gold makes a lower low on the pivot down"
8. Back Above the 50-Day
Lin asked whether gold trading above its 50-day moving average through the better part of August and into September means the bear trend that ran most of the year is over. Wagner said "possibly" twice and then qualified it.
The bear market he is describing has a textbook shape. After the extreme high — where only the wick reached past 5500 up to the 57 area, not the real bodies — gold gapped lower, found support near 4,800, made a lower high and then a lower low, and that sequence of lower highs and lower lows is what he called the definition of a bear market
The same moment broke the moving average. Gold had traded above its 50-day from about 3600 all the way to the record near 57, and the breakdown came at the start of that lower-high sequence
From March to August it traded below that line for about half the year, which is the stretch he is measuring the recovery against
The turn he dates precisely is 5 August. Gold opened around 4130 and closed at 4309 that day, a spike that took it back above the 50-day moving average, and he says market technicians use that average to judge whether the metal is in a bullish or bearish regime
What he wants to see before a correction becomes a new uptrend is a pause. A market coming out of a corrective period forms a base of sideways movement first, which is what he says happened here — "we definitely formed a base"
9. Crude's Trend Is Gaining
Asked what would materially change gold's direction into year-end, Wagner answered with a crude chart and a different chart type.
The move he is tracking starts at $66 a barrel in July, runs to 91, pulls back to a higher low at 73 and then makes a higher high
His resistance is a narrow band. "I'm putting resistance currently at between 98.50 and 99 per barrel", on the futures contract, with cash and Brent a little above that
The speed is what he emphasizes. Crude light hit a low of about 80 on Wednesday the 27th and was at 96 at the time of recording: "So, it's ticked up $16 per barrel in about the last month. And that's a huge move"
He switched to a Heikin-Ashi chart to read momentum rather than price. On that chart type the high, low and close match a candlestick but the open is fixed at the midpoint of the prior candle, which he says cleans up the noise
What he reads there is candle size, and it is growing. The last correction contained only two green candles and this rally only two red ones; small bodies mark a move running out of steam, and the current bodies are getting larger. His conclusion on the trend in crude: "It's getting stronger, not weaker"
10. What Would Break Gold
Lin's closing question was what would make Wagner bearish, specifically an event that took gold back toward $4,000 and through it.
His answer needs two things at once, not one. A heavy-handed Fed on rates, which works against gold, together with a downtick in inflation, which has been moving higher and which he says is driven largely by crude
The rate path he named is a hike next week and another in December. A quarter-point move followed by a second one at the December meeting "would do it too", and would change his overall outlook
The mechanism is competition from fixed income. Gold does not thrive as interest rates rise, he said, because fixed-income assets become more attractive as they pay more
His preferred real-time inflation gauge is not CPI or PPI. Besides those two releases, the thing to watch is light crude, because in his framing crude moving up is the undertone to every inflation increase
Wagner's bottom line is that gold's next move is a bet on crude: as long as oil keeps rising, inflation pressure keeps the Fed hiking and keeps gold bid, and it takes both a falling oil price and a Fed that keeps going in December to break the base he sees near $4,400.
Bonus Insights
Lin's opening line of the interview was a price check that moved during the recording. He put gold at $4,400 with 4448 on his screen; Wagner, working from December futures, was quoting almost 4,450 at the same moment
Wagner's read of the 50-day moving average is about other people's behavior, not his own. He uses it because market technicians collectively treat it as the line between a bullish and a bearish regime, which makes a close above it a signal regardless of what the average itself measures
He described a head-and-shoulders pattern as available but not what he sees. Asked directly, he said the shape can be read as an inverse head and shoulders, then returned to the compression triangle and the 4,000 base as the structure that actually matters
The two men agreed to reconvene in a couple of weeks to see where gold had gone, which puts the next check-in after the FOMC meeting both expected to deliver a hike
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
CME FedWatch Tool (The rate-hike gauge Wagner cited at "about 60%" and rising, which he said had been moving up steadily)
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