The gold price continued to rise today (February 20th), breaking the historical high of 2950 and reaching the 2954 level. Institutions have recently repeatedly announced their bullish target of "3000", which is within reach. Although technically overbought in the medium to long term, after the sharp drop on February 14th, at least the overbought at the daily level has been alleviated, which is seen by the market as a good opportunity to intervene on dips. Therefore, the gold price continues to rise. The negotiations between the United States and Russia and Ukraine have diverged, and the overall easing policy of the central bank is favorable for gold liquidity. However, the news that Musk wants to investigate the largest treasury in the United States has made safe haven funds prefer gold. The key technical obstacles in the past two days can be found in the chart analysis below.

Although the expectation of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve this year has been suppressed, the non central bank's loose stance still benefits gold?

1. The Reserve Bank of Australia has cut interest rates for the first time in over four years: On February 18th, the Reserve Bank of Australia announced a 25 basis point reduction in its benchmark interest rate, from 4.35% to 4.10%. This is the first interest rate cut since November 2020, marking the official end of its three-year interest rate hike cycle and the beginning of a monetary policy easing cycle. Previously, since May 2022, the Reserve Bank of Australia has raised interest rates a total of 13 times, with the most recent rate hike in November 2023. Since then, the benchmark interest rate has remained unchanged at 4.35%. This interest rate cut is aimed at addressing the slowdown in economic growth, easing inflationary pressures, and changes in the global economic environment, but it remains cautious about further policy easing.

2. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand will cut interest rates by another 50 basis points: In February 2025, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will lower its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points, from 4.25% to 3.75%. Since August last year, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has cumulatively lowered interest rates by 175 basis points. The slowdown in inflation in the country provides greater room for policy easing to boost the domestic economy, which is struggling to emerge from a deep economic recession. According to the latest forecast, the benchmark interest rate in New Zealand will drop to 3.45% by June and to 3.10% by the end of the year.?

3. Bank of Thailand: The Bank of Thailand unexpectedly cut interest rates by 25 basis points in October last year, lowering the policy rate from 2.50% to 2.25%, and has since remained stable at that level. Due to weak economic growth in Thailand, official data shows that the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.5% last year, lower than the median market expectation of 2.7%, and private investment has been declining for multiple quarters. The market expects that the Bank of Thailand will have further room for interest rate cuts in the future. Fitch's BMI department predicts that the Bank of Thailand may have a total of 75 basis points of interest rate cut space in 2025.?

4. European Central Bank: Since June last year, the European Central Bank has lowered borrowing costs five times. Boris Vujcic, a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank and Governor of the Croatian Central Bank, stated on February 13th that even if the Federal Reserve slows down the pace of interest rate cuts, if underlying inflation rapidly declines, the European Central Bank may still cut interest rates three more times this year. The market had previously anticipated that the European Central Bank may cut interest rates three times this year.

Musk wants to investigate the largest treasury in the United States

On February 18th local time, Musk's post on X platform shook the US financial industry. He announced an audit of the largest vault in the United States, the Fort Knox vault, with the caption 'Gold is no longer there' causing market panic. After the news came out, international gold prices rose in the short term, and investors sought safe haven assets. Gold futures prices once hit a high of nearly $3000 per ounce, intensifying market concerns about the stability of the US financial system.

This incident originated last weekend when the financial blog account Zerohedge posted and @ Musk, stating that since 1974, no one has physically inspected the more than 4500 tons of US gold in the Knox Fort vault to see if it really exists. Elon Musk asked if the review should be conducted at least once a year, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand? Paul replied, 'No, let's do it.'. This discussion quickly sparked nationwide attention, with netizens speculating on the whereabouts of the gold and even suspecting that the existing gold was disguised as gold foil candy.

As the world's largest gold reserve country, the United States holds 8133 tons of gold, of which 4572.2 tons are held in the Fort Knox vault. The vault was built in 1936 and is tightly guarded by the United States Mint police. The access code is controlled by multiple people, and the main vault door weighs over 20 tons. But since September 23, 1974, when the Director of the United States Mint led some lawmakers and journalists to visit a vault (which accounted for about 6% of the gold reserves), the US Treasury Department has not audited Fort Knox gold anymore and only checks the vault seals annually. In 2017, during Trump's presidency, after visiting, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Senator McConnell only released a few blurry photos without providing detailed reports.

The whereabouts of US gold reserves have always been questionable. In early 1974, the New York Journal published an article claiming that the Rockefeller family had colluded with the Federal Reserve to sell Fort Knox gold. Three days later, the author of the article mysteriously fell from the building. In 2011, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kahn, claimed to have evidence of 191.3 tons of gold "missing" from Fort Knox, and was subsequently arrested for "rape". He resigned and no longer mentioned the matter. The investigation also showed that the US government lost 97% of its official gold reserve audit reports from 1975 to 1986.

In recent years, many countries have requested to retrieve gold stored in the US treasury, but have been refused by the US. In 2014, BNP Paribas was heavily fined $8.9 billion by the United States for demanding the retrieval of gold. But in the past two to three months, the United States has been buying a large amount of gold, and the gold inventory on the New York Mercantile Exchange has surged from 533 tons in November 2024 to 1076 tons in February 2025, suspected to be frantically repurchasing to plug the hole.

On February 18th local time, Rand? Paul officially invites Musk to visit the state treasury for review. Musk has announced that the inspection will be live streamed throughout the entire process. If the US gold reserve fraud is ultimately exposed, the hegemony of the US dollar will be strongly impacted, and the global economic system may also face rewriting. The world is waiting for the results of this audit storm. No matter what the review result is, this review event will be in high demand for gold buying for a period of time.

Technical analysis

From a technical perspective, RSI at the weekly chart level and above are all in overbought areas, but this is a common phenomenon in a strong upward trend. The current upward trend has a good structure, with a focus on defending against overbought or pullbacks after overbought divergence. At a time when the gold price has risen above the historical high of $2950 to $2954.71 per ounce, the resistance that is currently being focused on is the 2980-2990 area, as shown in the following chart. 2980 is the current entry point of the weekly green trend line, and crazy market conditions usually overflow a bit, but the 3000 integer level may not be reached at once. Therefore, the resistance that is being focused on this week is the 2980-2990 area.