It took nearly two years for the price of gold to climb from $2,000 to $3,000 an ounce. The timeline from $3,000 to $4,000 could be half that long, arriving about a year from now, some analysts say.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and other Wall Street analysts are forecasting gold prices will reach the $4,000 milestone by the middle of 2026. That would be just 15 months after gold hit $3,000 in March. Gold first closed above the $2,000 level in April 2023, according to FactSet data.
In a report last month, Natasha Kaneva, head of global commodities strategy at JPMorgan, said the chance of a recession and global trade risks make the $4,000 target all the more possible.
"We remain deeply convinced of a continued structural bull case for gold and raise our price targets accordingly," Kaneva said. JPMorgan Research expects gold to average $3,675 an ounce in the fourth quarter of this year, rising to $4,000 in the third quarter of 2026. Previously, the firm didn't expect gold to touch $4,000 at all next year.
Monday, Comex gold for July delivery closed at $3,332.20 an ounce, up 26.7% year to date, according to Dow Jones Market Data. SPDR Gold Shares, an ETF that tracks the price of bullion, has been forming a flat base over the past 11 weeks. The potential buy point is 317.63.
The VanEck Gold Miners ETF found support at its 10-week moving average and was added to IBD SwingTrader Monday.
Gold Mining Stocks
Gold's rally for the year has driven gold mining stocks to hefty gains. As a group, the 79-stock gold, silver and gem miners group swung more than 45% higher for the year through June 30.
Newmont and Wheaton Precious Metals showed year-to-date gains of more than 60% on Monday. Kinross Gold was up 71%.
Denver-based Royal Gold rallied 354% in the first half of the year. But shares tumbled almost 8% Monday after Royal Gold announced it would acquire Sandstorm Gold as well as copper miner Horizon Copper. Shares of Sandstorm rallied 6.7%.
Central Banks And Gold Prices
Demand from central banks and declining interest in the U.S. dollar are two major trends keeping gold prices firm.
Worldwide, central banks' gold holdings at the end of last year rose to nearly 20% of official reserves, or about 36,200 tons. That's up from around 15% at the end of 2023, according to IMF data quoted by JPMorgan. Central banks are expected to buy an additional 900 tons this year.
"What's driving the gold rush is central banks' waning confidence in the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency," said a report from Yardeni Research's William Pesek. "The monetary authorities of U.S. adversaries are likely to continue buying gold as a dollar alternative."
The BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are eager to create a dollar alternative and also are big buyers of gold, the Yardeni report noted. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) increased its gold holdings for a seventh straight month in May to $3.285 trillion, from $3.282 trillion the previous month.
"The PBOC's determination to continue buying gold at such elevated prices ... demonstrates Beijing's urgency to diversify away from the dollar," Pesek wrote. That's also manifested in China's declining holdings of U.S. Treasuries. From $784 billion in February, China's holdings of U.S. debt dropped to $757 billion by the end of April.
Global Shift Toward Gold
The shift among central banks to gold began in early 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine. The world watched closely as the U.S. froze Russia's bond and cash reserves, while other Western nations imposed additional sanctions. Gold is highly liquid and much less likely to be confiscated.
JPMorgan Research says that even after three straight years of central bank purchases totaling more than 1,000 tons each, the structural trend has further to run in 2025 and 2026. Diversification away from U.S. dollar reserve holdings, while still moderate, has been accelerating in recent years, according to the International Monetary Fund.
"Add in economic, trade and U.S. policy uncertainty and shifting, more unpredictable geopolitical alliances and we think further diversification into gold will amount to around 900 tons of CB (central bank) buying in 2025," Gregory Shearer, head of base and precious metals strategy at JPMorgan, said in the June 10 forecast.
Gold Prices And Geopolitical Risk
Stephen Mullowney, CEO of Canada-based mining company TRX Gold, doesn't expect geopolitical risk to abate anytime soon.
"If we look at the next 12-18 months, we're going to see a significant increase in geopolitical risk," he said in comments emailed to IBD. "The world (unfortunately) will become messier before it gets better. ... When the world gets messy, gold is a safe investment. We've already seen this to hold true, and it won't change anytime soon."
U.S. trade tariffs, he added, have the potential to increase consumer prices, and gold historically has been a hedge against inflation.
Individual investors also are buying gold, though on a smaller scale.
Of the nearly $50 billion of ETF inflows during the first half of 2025 into nonequity and fixed-income funds, some $20 billion went to gold ETFs, according to State Street Investment Management.
