NFP Stop Hunt: What the Jobs Report Did to Gold and the Pound on 4 September 2026

An NFP stop hunt is price running through the stops past an obvious level around the jobs report, then closing back past that level. It comes in two orders. The hunt can come hours before the 08:30 release, which then carries the run, or the release candle can be the hunt itself. One Friday, 4 September 2026, shows both on two markets.

NFP is nonfarm payrolls, the headline of the US Employment Situation report. The stop hunt is our word for what most traders call a liquidity sweep. All times here are New York, a candle is named by the time it opens, and on gold we count $1 as 1 pip. The basics of the release, and why its date moves, are in the guide to news trading.

What is an NFP stop hunt, and what makes it different?

It is an ordinary stop hunt with a known clock. Stops rest past the obvious levels of the morning, as they do every day. The report adds one thing: a minute everybody knows about, when every stop near price can fill in one candle. That is News-Induced Liquidity, and the read that applies it to this report is On NFP.

So the useful question on a jobs Friday is not what the number will be. It is which levels the morning left, and what the candle did to them. On 4 September that question had different answers on different markets, inside the same minute.

The hunt came first: gold, 4 September 2026

Gold's Asian Box was 27 pips, 4459.93 to 4487.02. On the 03:45 candle London reached 4490.63, 4 pips over the box and the high of the day, and closed back inside at 4483.23. Nearly five hours before the release, the top was in.

Our On NFP page stops at the 15-minute view of the jobs candle. Inside it, on one-minute candles from the same feed, the path went like this:

The 15-minute candle closed at 4393.52, 97 pips from end to end and back above Thursday's low. That looks like a finished hunt of that low, and it was not the end. The 09:00 candle traded 4365.31, 15 pips through Thursday's low and the low of the day, 125 pips under London's high. It also closed back above that level, at 4393.81.

We read two hunts in that one day: London's over the box, and the run under Thursday's low. The release did not make the turn, which was five hours old. It chose the minute the run came.

The gold price after the jobs report kept moving. By 11:15 it had traded back to 4448.55, 83 pips off the low and still 11 under the box, and the day ended at 4430.45. Why gold can fall on a report that should lift it is another story, told in why gold fell after a weak jobs report. This page leaves the number alone. The gold trading guide has more of gold's own days.

The candle was the hunt: GBP/USD, 4 September 2026

The pound had a similar night and a different morning. Its box was 23 pips, 1.35212 to 1.35445, and at 03:30 London reached 1.35490, 5 pips over the box and a pip past Thursday's high of 1.35479. The next candle closed back inside at 1.35339. That looks like gold, and like gold's, the pound's high held. The morning then drifted, and at 08:15 price closed at 1.35320, in the middle of the box. The difference came at 08:30.

Then the whole hunt came in one minute. The 08:30 minute opened at 1.35321 and fell straight to 1.34815, 51 pips and 40 under the box. It closed at 1.34919. Nothing traded lower for the rest of the day. The stops under the box went in sixty seconds, and we read that as the crowd's stops funding the turn.

Now the untidy parts, which most write-ups leave out. Thursday's low sat at 1.34798, and the candle stopped 2 pips short of it, so the next obvious pool was not taken. The candle closed at 1.34976, still 24 pips under the box. The first close back inside the box came on the 11:30 candle at 1.35215, by less than a pip, and that candle closed three and a quarter hours after the release. Price reached 1.35249 at 11:45 and ended the day at 1.35158, back under the box. A day like this is a hunt only in hindsight, and at 10:00 it looked like a break.

One dollar, one minute

The same candle held the low on the pound and missed it on gold, for no reason a chart can give. That morning the 08:30 candle held an end of the day on six of our eight markets: EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD and NZD/USD at their lows, USD/JPY and USD/CHF at their highs. Gold and USD/CAD were the two that did not, and USD/CAD also had Canada's own employment figures in that minute.

Those are not six confirmations. It is one move of the dollar, read eight times.

Nor is every report like this. We counted five jobs reports from 8 May to 4 September 2026 on those eight markets, on 15-minute candles. A candle holds when its high is the day's high or its low the day's low, session break to session break. It held on 12 of 40 market-days, 4 highs and 8 lows, and half of them came on this one Friday. It is a small count on one feed, and it counts candles, not trades. On NFP has it report by report.

When the close back fails: gold, 2 July 2026

The jobs report came out on a Thursday that month, which is why you read the date from the official schedule. Gold's candle opened at 4065.05 and ran to 4140.19, 75 pips up and 25 through Wednesday's high of 4115.48. It closed at 4132.48.

The 09:15 candle closed at 4112.95, 3 pips back under Wednesday's high. That is a close back, and on the two days above it would have looked like the hunt ending. The next candle closed at 4134.51, and at 09:45 gold reached 4143.72, the high of the day. It ended at 4122.43, still over the level. Whoever read that close back as the turn was wrong within half an hour. No hunt had finished, or none had happened. A chart cannot tell you which.

What did each seat see on 4 September?

The Three Seats read that Friday three ways.

• Retail sold the pound's close. At 1.34976 it looked like a break, 24 pips under the box. Price went 9 pips further, then traded 27 over that close.
• The market maker, as we read it, saw the pound's box untouched below. London had never traded under 1.35212, and a minute everyone could see coming was about to arrive. On gold the same minute had Thursday's low in reach as well. Nobody outside can see those orders.
• The observer compared the two. Gold's high was in before the report and its low came after it. The pound's low came inside the report's first minute. Both can be stated from the prices, and neither says who was behind them.

Common mistakes on a jobs Friday

All four come from reading one piece of the Friday as the whole of it.

1. Taking gold's 08:32 low for the end. It was 7 pips through Thursday's low and the candle closed back above that level. The 09:00 candle went another 9 pips lower.
2. Taking the 08:30 minute for the whole candle. Gold fell 81 pips in that minute, then went 32 pips back up inside a single later minute. In a market like that a stop has no tidy fill, which NFP spreads and slippage covers.
3. Treating a close back as final. Gold on 2 July closed back under Wednesday's high and went 28 pips past that high within half an hour.
4. Assuming the same shape on every market. One minute gave a hunt on the pound and a run on gold.

How to trade NFP takes the plans on page one, and more Fridays are in the markups of 1 June 2026. These days were picked afterwards. A hunt seen afterwards is not a setup, and our own fixed rule of fading hunts on a high-impact release lost money after costs.

Course 2 of ForexiaPRO, The Chaos Pattern, teaches this read step by step in lesson 2.3.3, NFP, CPI, FOMC: One Read, Three Calendars.