(MENAFN- The Rio Times) After an autumn surge that took bullion to fresh records, gold and silver are starting this week on the back foot.

Spot gold is trading just above $4,000 an ounce, while silver hovers a touch below $50, both down from last week's peaks as the U.S. dollar and bond yields push higher again.

The turning point came over the past seven days. As Washington finally ended its 43-day shutdown and a backlog of economic data hit the screens, Federal Reserve officials stressed caution on further rate cuts.

Market odds of a December cut, once treated as a done deal, have been cut roughly in half. With the sense of crisis fading, investors shifted back toward the dollar and Treasuries, weakening the case for holding non-yielding metals as a short-term refuge.

Yet the retreat comes after one of the most powerful bull runs in years. Central banks, led by China, have been buying gold consistently for more than a year, wary of debt-heavy budgets, politicised regulation and unpredictable tax policy in major economies.



The World Gold Council estimates that global demand in the third quarter reached record nominal values, even before the latest geopolitical shocks fully fed through.

Silver, riding on both safe-haven flows and real-world demand from electronics, solar panels and grid upgrades, briefly topped $54 earlier this month.

Flows now tell a more cautious story. Trading volumes in the giant SPDR Gold Shares ETF jumped as prices rolled over, with investors taking profits but not abandoning the trade.

Silver's iShares trust has seen net outflows over the past month, but inflows returned in recent sessions as dip-buyers stepped in near the $50 line, keeping holdings just under 490 million ounces.



Technically, both metals are in a corrective phase rather than a collapse. On the daily charts, gold still sits above its rising 50-day moving average near the high-$3,900s, preserving the broader uptrend that began in mid-year.

Silver remains in the upper half of its Bollinger band, with the 50-day average climbing toward the high-$40s. On four-hour charts, however, momentum has clearly cooled: MACD signals are negative, and relative-strength indices are drifting lower, pointing to the risk of a deeper test of support around $3,950 for gold and $49 for silver before any renewed push higher.

For now, bullion's fate is tied less to ideology than to interest rates. If upcoming U.S. jobs data and Fed comments revive hopes of easier money and more disciplined budgeting, the latest pullback may simply mark a pause in a larger move that reflects investors' long-running distrust of indebted, interventionist governments.

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