At 2:00 a.m. on March 19, 2026 (this Thursday), the information related to the Federal Reserve’s March interest rate meeting decision and Powell’s hawkish speech at the subsequent press conference undoubtedly dropped a depth bomb on the global financial market.It also looks like a carefully designed liquidity harvesting operation by the Federal Reserve targeting global markets. No one in the global financial markets was spared, and they were all severely impacted by the overall hawkish tone of the Federal Reserve! Even in the context of the current conflict and war between the United States, Israel and Iran that is intensifying and global risk aversion continues to be high, the safe-haven precious metals market has not been immune.Gold, silver and other precious metal markets have experienced varying degrees of selling, causing gold and silver prices to plummet. Twelve hours before the Federal Reserve announced its March interest rate decision meeting, the price of gold quickly fell below the key psychological price of $5,000 per ounce, affected by the Fed's expectation that it would not cut interest rates. Then, after the Federal Reserve officially announced its interest rate decision in March and Powell's press conference speech, the price of gold once again suffered a new round of decline. It can be clearly seen from the gold price chart that within 24 hours before and after the Federal Reserve announced its March interest rate decision, gold not only fell below the key price of $5,000 per ounce, but in this short 24 hours, the price plummeted by more than 10%.It once fell to around $4,500 per ounce, which was also gold's lowest price since February 3.