Gold: Macro Regime, Supply Fundamentals, and Price Scenarios for 2026
Analyzes gold's demand and supply balance through 2026, with scenario-based price paths anchored to Fed rate trajectory, dollar direction, and the structural shift in central bank reserve allocation since 2022.
Gold's 2025 repricing owed more to official-sector accumulation and a broadening investor bid than to real yields, a change in driver mix that shapes how the metal behaves into 2026. This report sets out the year's supply and demand balance, assesses whether central banks can sustain the post-2022 pace of buying, and weighs mine supply and recycling against ETF and bar-and-coin demand. Three price paths are framed against the Federal Reserve easing cycle and the dollar, alongside the geopolitical and fiscal tail risks that would carry gold beyond the base case.
What's inside
- 01Executive Summary: Key Findings and Base-Case Price Range
- 02The 2025 Foundation: Record ETF Inflows, Repeated All-Time Highs, and What Carried Over
- 03Macro Framework: Real Rates, Dollar Trajectory, and the Fed Cutting Cycle
- 04Central Bank Demand: Post-2022 Reserve Diversification and Pace Sustainability
- 05Mine Supply: Output Trends Across China, Australia, Russia, and the Americas
- 06Recycling and Secondary Supply: Price Sensitivity at Current Spot Levels
- 07Investment Demand: ETF Flows, Bar and Coin, and the Geographic Shift Toward Asia
- 08Jewelry and Technology Demand: Volume Compression Under High Spot Prices
- 09Price Scenario Analysis: Base Case, Recession Flight-to-Safety, and Reflation Reversal
- 10Tail Risks: Geopolitical Escalation, Fiscal Stress, and Dollar Dislocation
- 11Conclusions: Positioning Implications Across Portfolio and Horizon
- 12Data Sources and Methodology
- ↳Global mine production by country (2020-2026E)
- ↳All-in sustaining cost curves by producer
- ↳Central bank gold reserves (2015-2026)
- ↳ETF holdings vs gold price correlation analysis
- ↳Supply-demand balance forecast (2024-2028)
- ↳Price scenario analysis with probability weights
- ↳Producer margin sensitivity to gold price
- ↳Regional production cost comparison
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