According to the Zhitong Finance APP, after the opening of trading in the Asian market on Monday, the spot price of gold traded around $4,320 per ounce, continuing its upward trend after four consecutive days of gains and maintaining last week's strong momentum. During the Asian trading session, Asian gold stocks collectively rose. Despite the Federal Reserve announcing three consecutive interest rate cuts on Wednesday Eastern Time, three policymakers voted against the cuts, leading to significant divergence among stock market investors regarding the extent of further monetary easing by the Federal Reserve in 2026. Last Friday, all three major U.S. stock indices significantly corrected, but the spot gold price still accumulated a rise of over 2% last week.
Overall, gold continued to rise steadily after four consecutive days of gains, highlighting that the conflicting hawkish and dovish statements from Federal Reserve officials have prompted most interest rate futures traders to increase their bets on further monetary easing next year.
Philip Marey, a senior strategist at Rabobank, pointed out that to stimulate the economy ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, the Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates to neutral levels or even lower by November 2026. This strategist stated that considering the lag in the transmission of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, the rate cuts need to be completed before October to impact the midterm elections in November. Therefore, under political pressure from Trump, the Federal Reserve may lower rates to 2.75%-3.00% by September 2026, equivalent to three cuts of 25 basis points—significantly higher than the median expectation of only one rate cut in 2026 shown in the FOMC dot plot.
The two dissenters of the Federal Reserve's December rate cut decision—Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid—issued statements on Friday explaining their reasons for voting against the rate cut. Goolsbee stated that after the federal government shutdown delayed key economic reports, a &#34;more prudent&#34; approach before further rate cuts should be to wait for more data; Schmid noted that inflation &#34;remains too high.&#34; Precious metals typically perform better in low-interest-rate environments as they do not pay interest.
So far this year, gold has risen over 60%, while silver has performed even stronger than gold—silver prices have doubled compared to the beginning of the year—both are on track for their best annual performance since 1979.
This rapid increase is primarily driven by global central banks significantly and continuously increasing their holdings of physical gold, while institutional investors withdrawing from sovereign bonds and cash-like assets to buy gold also provided substantial support. Statistics from the World Gold Council show that, except for May, global stock market gold ETF holdings have been rising every month this year.
Senior analysts at Goldman Sachs, including Lina Thomas, stated in a research report that they still expect central banks to continue buying, combined with private investors' inflows into gold ETFs under the backdrop of ongoing easing by the Federal Reserve, which is expected to push gold prices up to $4,900 by the end of 2026. They believe that the high level of central bank purchases is a &#34;multi-year trend&#34; and reaffirmed their forecast of an average monthly purchase of 70 tons of gold by central banks in 2026
Goldman Sachs' latest research report shows that its &#34;nowcast&#34; model estimates that global central banks net purchased 49 tons of gold in October. This figure is significantly higher than the monthly average of 17 tons before 2022, indicating strong and sustained demand from official sectors. Goldman Sachs stated that the robust purchasing behavior of global central banks during periods of high volatility in gold prices suggests that their decisions are not highly price-sensitive but are based on long-term strategic considerations to hedge against geopolitical risks and the financial risks associated with the increasingly large U.S. debt market.
Silver prices have also recently received strong support, as speculative funds collectively bet on a historic squeeze in October, leading to a continued tight supply situation. Last Friday, silver reached a historic record of $64.6573 per ounce.
As of 10:30 AM Singapore time, the spot price of gold rose by 0.6% to $4,327.20 per ounce. Silver futures increased by 1.5% to $62.95; previously, silver had fallen by 2.5% on Friday. Platinum and palladium rose, while the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index remained largely unchanged.
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According to top Wall Street investment institutions like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, the gold rally, which has repeatedly set historical highs and has already surpassed $4,000 this year, is not yet over. They believe that short-term corrections are merely stumbling blocks on the path of a bull market, urging the market to look ahead, with the possibility of breaking through the epic level of $5,000 in 2026.
Another similar sensitivity study from Goldman Sachs indicates that if only about 1% of U.S. Treasury bonds held by the private sector flows into gold assets, the spot gold price could approach $5,000 per ounce. Overall, the gold market size is relatively &#34;small&#34; compared to U.S. Treasuries, so a small proportion of fund migration can lead to significant marginal price impacts, which is the logic behind JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs' sensitivity calculations for gold prices potentially heading towards $5,000.
Another major Wall Street bank, Bank of America, has provided even more aggressive predictions. Strategists from Bank of America stated that based on the logic of &#34;currency devaluation trades&#34; and historical bull market patterns, gold prices are expected to surge to $6,000 in the spring of next year. A statistic from Bank of America shows that the allocation of gold assets in global investment institutions and private client portfolios remains relatively low, at only 2.3% and 0.5%, respectively, indicating that the market's structural bullish positioning in gold is not crowded.
At the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) annual meeting held in Kyoto, Japan— the largest annual gathering in the precious metals industry—representatives generally predicted that by the time of the meeting on October 5 next year, gold prices would approach $5,000 per ounce

Since the beginning of this year, gold prices have risen by more than 60%, and silver prices have doubled, both expected to achieve their best annual performance since 1979. Despite the Federal Reserve's three consecutive interest rate cuts, internal policy differences have led to market disagreements about future monetary policy. The spot price of gold has risen for four consecutive days, and Wall Street remains firmly confident in gold. Analysts expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to neutral levels or even lower by November 2026 to stimulate the economy

Zhitong

The Federal Reserve's hawkish noise cannot suppress buying! Wall Street firmly believes in "gold faith," and gold prices are expected to rise for five consecutive days