Gold fell at the open on the same day oil spiked and stocks sold off, then closed higher. One dealer commentary attributes the entire move to the dollar, not the war.
Gold opened lower in premarket trading on September 9, down 0.9% to $4,438.20 an ounce, in a move one outlet attributed to the same Iranian tanker strikes and oil spike hitting equities that day. By the close, it had reversed: December gold futures finished at $4,460.70, up 0.49% on the session, while a spot-price read put gold up 1.02% to $4,399.61.
The only source that addresses why gold reversed, a specialist bullion-dealer commentary, attributes the bounce explicitly to dollar softness drawing physical buyers back after what it called a punishing three-session slide, describing the move as mechanical repricing rather than a trend change or safe-haven demand. Gold had fallen more than $100 over the three sessions prior and was trading below its 55-day and 200-day moving averages, near $4,534, according to the same source. Silver showed a similar pattern, down 0.8% at the open before closing up roughly 1.23%.
That explanation complicates rather than confirms the going thesis around gold's behavior in this conflict. A simple safe-haven story, in which war fear drives gold higher, would fit the closing direction but not the source's own account of why it happened. A pure dollar-mechanics story fits the account given but leaves unresolved why the dollar itself softened on a day marked by war-driven risk aversion elsewhere in markets.
The causal explanation here is single-sourced and unconfirmed against a larger outlet, and a clean, independently verified dollar-index reading for the same session was not available to settle the question directly. The direction of gold's move is solid. The reason for it, for now, rests on one dealer's read.