From the bottom of the price, gold has brought a profit of about 6% to investors who "buy at a time of decline".
However, the 60% increase since the beginning of the year has many investors wondering whether gold can continue its upward trend in 2026 or is it time to take profits.
Since 2020, annual gold profits are as follows:
2020: +24.4%.
2021: -3.5%.
2022: -0.23%.
2023: +11.1%.
2024: +27.2%.
2025: +60.1%.
Recently, Mr. Daan Struyven - co-head of global commodity research at Goldman Sachs - gave an analysis of the gold price forecast for 2026.
The October gold price cut came from concerns that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) may not cut interest rates in December, after Chairman Jerome Powell said that the Fed is unlikely to cut interest rates further in 2025. This temporarily increased bond yields and the US dollar, causing gold to lose support. As expectations of a rate cut have returned, yields have fallen and the US dollar has stabilized, gold prices have recovered.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Daan Struyven predicted that the upward trend of gold will continue to last until 2026 thanks to two main drivers: The Fed continues to cut interest rates: Goldman Sachs economists predict the Fed will cut the score by 75%; Central banks take strong purchases: Goldman Sachs estimates that central banks will buy 80 tons of gold per month.
Mr. Struyven emphasized that the freezing of Russia's gold reserves in 2022 after the conflict broke out in Ukraine in 2022 is a wake-up call for central banks to increase gold hoarding, "the only truly safe asset".
He said that the forecast for world gold prices to increase by 20% in 2026 may be still modest. If individual investors continue to increase their gold holdings to diversify their portfolios, gold prices could break out more strongly.
The gold market is quite small. Gold ETFs are only 1/70 of the size of the US Treasury note market. A small shift from the global bond market is enough to create a huge push for gold prices" - he noted.
In its October report, Goldman Sachs said central banks bought 64 tonnes of gold in September, up sharply from 21 tonnes in August, and forecast the gold buying trend will last for many years.
In general, the 156-year-old bank forecasts that the net purchase price of 80 tons/month will take place until the end of 2026.
According to ETF issuer VanEck, central banks have been buying more than 1,000 tonnes of gold per year since 2022, double the average of the previous decade.
