White House Plays Down Prospects For Quick Putin-Trump Meeting

Gold (XAU/USD) is testing the important $4,200 support level associated with prior demand zones having previously triggered rebounds in the past. Current price action suggests possible upside momentum if price holds above this support level at $4,200.

Support Holds Near $4,200

Gold’s 1-hour chart shows the market approaching the lower boundary of the recent trading range around $4,200. Historical data indicates this zone has consistently acted as a strong demand base. Sellers have shown reduced strength near $4,217–$4,200, signaling possible defensive buying.

According to Ali _charts, “If gold holds $4,200 as support, a rebound to $4,300 or even $4,380 could follow.” This tweet reflects the market’s focus on defending the support level. Price structure suggests a potential “V-shaped” recovery, where buyers may step in aggressively.

Momentum indicators imply the recent drop has been contained within a short-term range. Sharp declines often precede mean reversion when demand enters the market, which could support a rebound toward higher levels.

Rebound Targets and Market Structure

If $4,200 holds, the first recovery target is $4,300, aligning with mid-range resistance from prior consolidations. This level could act as an initial zone for profit-taking by traders.

The second target stands at $4,380, representing the upper boundary of the current trading range. This area often serves as a liquidity zone where larger market participants may adjust positions. A bounce toward this level would signal a short-term recovery in price action.

A move back below $4,200 would likely open lower supports near $4,170, and draw additional defensive settlements into the market focus. Traders are eyeing this point for a potential shift in short-term trend and future buying reaction.

For now, the market’s direction largely depends on the defense of the $4,200 support. Holding this zone could allow gold to regain upward momentum and challenge the $4,300–$4,380 range efficiently.

Source: CryptoSlate

The Bank of England warned of parallels between the $1.7 trillion private credit boom and the subprime debt crisis, as UK officials confirmed plans to subject the market to stress tests.

BOE Governor Andrew Bailey told a Parliament committee on Tuesday that “alarm bells” were ringing in the sector. He cited conversations with industry figures who assured him that “everything was fine in their world, apart from the role of the rating agencies,” in an echo of the confusion over the quality of debt in subprime debt securitizations almost two decades ago.

“I said, ‘Well, we’re not playing that movie again, are we?’” Bailey told a hearing of the House of Lords’ Financial Services Regulation Committee in London. “If you were involved before the financial crisis and during it, alarm bells start going off at that point.”

The comments by the British central bank chief, who also chairs the Basel, Switzerland,-based Financial Stability Board, are the latest warning about the world’s private credit market. Sarah Breeden, the BOE’s deputy governor for financial stability, pointed to the market’s opacity, leverage and its links with banks as some of the industry’s risks.

The sector has ballooned since the great financial crisis, driven in part by governments’ efforts to tighten regulation on commercial lenders and reduce risks. It’s also awash with cash from insurance firms, which require ratings for regulatory purposes. Firms are building more complex structures such as collateralized fund obligations with investment grade ratings, in part to accommodate insurance capital.

Concerns are mounting that any problems that emerge in the sector and the broader leveraged credit markets could quickly spread to banks and the wider economy after the recent collapse of US firms First Brands and Tricolor. Those cases prompted JP Morgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon to warn that “when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.”

Private credit executives have hit back, saying the issue was in loans that banks led and shouldn’t be held up as evidence of growing risks enabled by newer players muscling into lending. Still, Bailey said it was still an “open question” whether cases like First Brands were a “canary in the coal mine.”

In the run up to the financial crisis, creative packaging of loans led to groups of risky credits rebranded as collectively safe securities. The result was hundreds of billions of losses, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and a global financial crisis that weighed on growth for more than a decade.

Bailey, who helped oversee the BOE’s efforts to rescue the banks during the financial crisis, specifically mentioned the “slicing and dicing and tranching of loan structures” among the trends the bank was scrutinizing. The BOE has been exploring the issue for several months, amid escalating fears about the standalone risks from private credit and the potential for those to spill over into the mainstream banking sector.

Bailey and Breeden confirmed a Bloomberg News report earlier on Friday that the central bank was speaking with firms about conducting a “system-wide exploratory scenario” to find vulnerabilities in the broad private credit market. The so-called stress test would use a similar model to last year’s review of risks to core UK financial markets.

“We can see parallels with the GFC,” said Breeden. “What we don’t know is how macro significant those issues are.”

The scrutiny comes as President Donald Trump in the US and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves in the UK encourage pension funds and others to invest in private markets. The US Government Accountability Office is also assessing the risks posed by private credit is expected to report back in the spring.

“Precisely how close to a tipping point we are it is hard to say,” said David Blake, director of Bayes Business School’s Pensions Institute. “This wall of money will create a bubble that will eventually burst.”

The BOE doesn’t have direct regulatory oversight of private credit markets and will need cooperation from firms to probe the risks contained within the sector. The political hurdle for new regulation would likely also be high, given the UK government’s push for fewer burdens on businesses and a global wave of deregulation.

Bailey told the Lords committee that he would seek other avenues before new rules. “Transparency is the first, in a sense, disinfectant.”

“We have to have a system that encourages risk to be taken and investment to be made,” he said. “My first reaction is, how can we improve that? I wouldn’t go to regulation as the first answer to that.”

Source: Bloomberg Europe

Source: reuters

Source: Bloomberg

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European nations are working with Ukraine on a 12-point proposal to end Russia’s war along current battle lines, pushing back against Vladimir Putin’s renewed demands to the US for Kyiv to surrender territory in return for a peace deal.

A peace board chaired by US President Donald Trump would oversee implementation of the proposed plan, according to people familiar with the matter.

Once Russia follows Ukraine in agreeing to a ceasefire and both sides commit to halting territorial advances, the proposals envisage the return of all deported children to Ukraine and exchanges of prisoners. Ukraine would receive security guarantees, funds to repair war damage and a pathway to rapidly join the European Union.

Sanctions on Russia would gradually be lifted though some $300 billion in frozen central bank reserves would only be returned once Moscow agrees to contribute toward Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. The restrictions would snap back if Russia attacked its neighbor again.

Moscow and Kyiv would enter into negotiations on the governance of occupied territories, though neither Europe nor Ukraine will legally recognize any occupied land as Russian, the people said.

Russia has so far rejected calls to end the fighting along existing lines, despite incurring massive casualties in the war that’s now in its fourth year.

Details of the plan are being finalized and could still change, the people cautioned, asking not to be identified discussing private deliberations. Any proposal would also need buy-in from Washington and European officials may travel to the US this week, the people said.

The pitch echoes calls made by Trump last week to immediately freeze the conflict along current lines before starting negotiations.

Following a call with Putin and a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the US president said Russia and Ukraine should “stop where they are.”

“Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts,” he said in a Truth Social post.

He reiterated his position in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, saying both sides should “stop right now at the battle lines, go home, stop killing people and be done,” adding that they could discuss territory later.

Trump said he’s agreed to meet with Putin in Budapest in the coming weeks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio held phone talks on Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov but the two sides failed to reach agreement on a meeting to prepare for the summit.

The Kremlin sought to play down expectations for an early meeting between Putin and Trump.

“The work ahead will be challenging,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, according to the Interfax news service. “Neither President Trump nor President Putin have given a precise timeframe. Preparation, serious preparation, is needed.”

European leaders said they “strongly support” an immediate halt to Russia’s war in Ukraine along existing positions to allow for peace talks in a statement Tuesday.

Ukraine’s allies from the so-called Coalition of the Willing will convene on Friday. A summit of European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday will discuss additional sanctions targeting the Kremlin as well as financial aid to Ukraine through the use of frozen Russian central bank assets.

While Zelenskiy criticized Budapest as a venue for negotiations because of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Russia-friendly stance, he said he’d attend the summit talks if invited.

“We have moved closer to a possible end to the war, I can tell you that for certain,” Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv following his US visit. “That doesn’t mean it will definitely end, but President Trump has achieved a lot in the Middle East, and riding that wave he wants to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

Trump made no mention of Ukraine’s requests for more air defense, energy support or longer-range capabilities after his meeting with Zelenskiy on Friday.

During their discussions, Trump forcefully urged Zelenskiy to quickly accept a deal and emphasized Russia’s strengths, according to the people. US officials who were present floated the possibility of Ukraine making territorial concessions to enable an agreement, the people said.

The Ukrainian president said in remarks released over the weekend that the war should be frozen along current battle lines before the two sides can enter into peace negotiations.

“If we want to stop this war and to go to peace negotiations urgently and in a diplomatic way, we need to stay where we stay, not to give something additional to Putin,” he said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press With Kristen Welker broadcast on Sunday.

Ukraine’s allies have seen no signs of Putin shifting away from his maximalist demands, a senior European government official said. The only change they see is in Trump, who allies thought had come around to the need to increase pressure on Russia only to apparently backtrack again after talking to Putin, the official said.

The Russian president renewed demands that Ukraine cede the entire eastern Donbas area during his call with Trump on Thursday, according to the people. Russian troops have failed to fully occupy the area, which comprises the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in more than 11 years of fighting, and would likely take years to do so, if at all.

It’s unclear if Moscow is willing to make any territorial concessions elsewhere in return, said the people. In addition to the Crimean peninsula that it illegally annexed in 2014 and parts of the Donbas, Russia also partly occupies and lays claim to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Source: Bloomberg Europe