Gold short staged above 4390 after hawkish Fed; ES roll distorts futures

Only gold is genuinely tradeable at this hour: the three US indices sit in a thin pre-market, screened at 06:25 UTC against a 13:30 UTC cash open, and were logged as blocked rather than studied further. Gold trades at 4346.60 against a 20-day average of 4506.69, which is 1.45 ATR below the mean on an ATR14 of 110.54, computed on clean daily bars through 16 September with the live bar excluded. The Fed raised rates 25bp to 3.75-4.00% yesterday alongside higher projections, the dollar index is above 100, and VIX at 17.71 (+2.97%) clears both volatility filters. We published a short, but deliberately not at market: the 4273-4300 shelf held on both 16 and 17 September, so selling into it would be poor location. The order waits at 4390, below the 4413.10 reversal high, stop 4440.70, target 4295.00, reward-to-risk 1.87. One data note worth stating plainly: the continuous ES=F series rolled contracts overnight, showing a false +1.45% where the September and December contracts each rose 0.60%, with the basis stepping from +0.062% to +1.552%.