Gold price today slides under $4,300 as jobs shock fuels Fed hike fears

Gold continued its steep decline at the start of the week, with spot prices briefly dropping below $4,300 an ounce after Friday's sharp selloff. The metal touched an intraday low near $4,280, its weakest level since March, extending a two-session slide of more than $150 as investors absorbed the impact of a much stronger than expected US jobs report.

The latest nonfarm payrolls data shifted the macro narrative away from slowdown risk and toward renewed labor market strength, reducing the urgency for Federal Reserve rate cuts. Instead, traders are now debating whether the Fed might have to tighten again, as resilience in employment undercuts the case for easing and reinforces a higher-for-longer policy stance.

Rate expectations repriced aggressively in the wake of the report, with futures markets implying roughly a 72 percent probability of at least one additional Fed rate hike by December, according to CME's FedWatch tool. That hawkish turn pushed the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield to a two-week high on Friday and saw it edge higher again on Monday, increasing the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as gold.

Geopolitics added a further twist but did not deliver the usual support for bullion. Rising tensions involving Iran sent crude oil prices more than $3 a barrel higher as traders assessed the risk of broader escalation. While gold is traditionally treated as both an inflation hedge and a safe-haven asset, the move in yields dominated price action because any inflation impulse from higher energy costs fed back into expectations for tighter monetary policy.

Trading Insight

For traders, the shift in the Fed narrative is pivotal. As long as markets price in a rising chance of another hike and longer-dated yields remain under upward pressure, rallies in gold are likely to face selling interest from macro and systematic accounts rotating toward interest-bearing assets. Short-term players will be watching incoming US data for signs that labor strength was a one-off. Until that happens, momentum and rate-sensitive flows may continue to lean against the metal on strength.