The gold price baseline forecast is $4,900 per ounce, and it also points to rising demand for call options, which could mechanically amplify gains and losses near key strike prices. Spot gold rose above $4,680 during Monday’s intraday trading, the highest level since mid-May.
This forecast is based on two premises: global central banks maintain stronger physical gold purchasing demand; once the Fed’s interest-rate path stabilizes, Western private investors will increase their holdings of gold ETFs again.
It lies in the derivatives market: investors are again using gold call options to hedge global macro and policy risks. Call-option demand has risen significantly, creating a mechanism where both upside and downside can mechanically amplify prices. The具体 path is: after dealers sell call options, when the gold price approaches the concentrated strike price, they need to buy spot or futures to hedge the delta; when the price falls back, they unwind the hedge positions in the opposite direction, which can also amplify drawdowns.
If Western investment demand continues to rebound, and combines with central bank gold purchases and macro hedging demand, the price could be pushed above that target level in the strike-dense area, with two-way volatility also increasing. For client options and spot trading, common target ranges tend to fall between $4,800 and $5,500. The trading desk’s observed range and the research department’s fair forecasts should be understood separately.
The main reason is that markets no longer expect the Fed to cut rates in 2026, and push the remaining two rate cuts to June and December 2027, while also lowering the assumed inflows into gold ETFs. This research note revises the risk distribution on the basis of that lowered assumption.
Gold price has pushed to near the zone where options are densely positioned.
Spot gold on August 24 peaked at $4,680.70 intraday, the highest since May 14; around 14:25 that day it was quoted at $4,639.49. COMEX December gold futures settled at $4,697.80. Gold prices rebounded by about 15% from the mid-July low and, over the week up to August 23, broke above the 200-day moving average.
Data from the World Gold Council shows that last week gold ETF inflows totaled 46.7 tonnes, worth $6.4 billion, the largest single-week demand in nearly 10 months. North America and Europe-listed funds contributed the majority of the incremental inflows. The U.S. Treasury’s expansion of its long-end Treasury buyback arrangements has kept the dollar lower, also reducing the relative cost of dollar-denominated gold for overseas buyers. American Gold Exchange analyst Jim Wyckoff believes both fundamentals and technicals are leaning bullish at the same time; until clear reversal signals appear, the path with the least resistance for gold prices remains a strong consolidation.
CME’s公开数据显示 that in expiring contracts from September to December, around the four strike prices of $4,700, $4,800, $4,900, and $5,000, there are about 65,700 open long call options, corresponding to roughly 6.6 million ounces of notional exposure; the open interest at the $5,000 strike alone exceeds 22,000 contracts, the largest concentration. If the gold price continues probing higher in the $4,700 to $5,000 range, dealers’ hedging demand may shift from being spot-like (when gold is still far from $5,000, they only need to buy in small amounts) to continuous (as each small rise occurs, market makers’ hedging quantities they need to buy increase). Once gold is pulled into this “trap zone,” passive stock-buying by market makers could trigger a fierce market characterized by “rising more leads to buying more, buying more leads to rising more,” but whether that will truly happen still needs to be confirmed by monitoring trading activity and changes in implied volatility.
About 20 minutes after Monday’s open, GLD posted a large bullish spread trade: it sold about 116,000 contracts of in-the-money call options expiring on September 18 with a strike price of $420, collecting around $202 million in premium, and then bought the same number of call options with a strike price of $430, net collecting about $58 million. The structure’s breakeven point is around GLD $425; compared with the price at the time of about $427, it carries a tendency toward a short-term pullback. Meanwhile, the broader market remains bullish: Thinkorswim statistics show that GLD call option trading volume on the day exceeded 37,000 contracts, while puts were under 20,000; SpotGamma data show that 13 of the 15 most actively traded contracts were calls. Large orders and the overall flow direction are not consistent, so short-term volatility may rise as a result.
The medium-term framework for gold prices can still be summarized by three pillars: official-sector players continue to buy gold, creating a base of demand with relatively low price sensitivity; Western ETF allocations shift from outflows to inflows; and expectations for interest rates and real yields decline, reducing the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets. After the bank previously raised its model for central bank gold purchases, it estimated the official gold purchase pace over the next 12 months to be on the order of about 60 tonnes per month. Discussions around geopolitical conflicts and fiscal sustainability continue to support demand for gold as a macro hedge.
There remains a clear split in Wall Street’s targets. Goldman Sachs’ benchmark is $4,900; if the Federal Reserve raises rates again, that bank’s downside scenario pointed to $4,400. Deutsche Bank and Bank of America’s targets are mostly near $4,800; Morgan Stanley’s benchmark is about $4,400, with an upside scenario of $5,200. UBS’ target is also in the $5,200 area. The differences in targets reflect different weights assigned to the same set of variables—central bank gold purchases, ETF inflows, and the Fed’s policy path.
Near-term catalysts are concentrated in the latter half of this week: on Wednesday, the July PCE inflation index and personal income and outlays will be released; on Friday, Fed Chair Powell will deliver a policy speech at Jackson Hole. If the market reprices another September rate hike, dealers closing hedges could lead to a pullback larger than usual. Falling oil prices and a concurrent, temporary rebound in the dollar would also weaken the safe-haven premium in the near term.
① BTC broke above $80,000 on Tuesday, setting a new three-plus-month high; as of August, it has gained more than 28% so far.
② BTC’s rally was related to the U.S. Treasury bond buyback plan and Trump’s call for Congress to pass crypto regulation (a clear bill).
③ Analysts believe that the rise of devaluation trades is the key reason behind BTC’s rally, but others think the market’s demand for BTC cannot be sustained.
