You bought gold for safety, and for months the safe haven asset has done nothing while the world looked more dangerous by the week. Felix Prehn, an ex-investment banker and economist who now runs the Goat Academy, has just finished reading the newest Wall Street research on what might happen to gold prices next. Eight of the biggest banks on the planet published nearly the same view in two weeks. Such an agreement of views between eight banks at once is rare.
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Gold Price Forecast 2026 Outlook: Price Targets From Eight Major Banks
Below are the exact numbers each major bank published, plus the simple reasons behind them.
Felix Prehn also explains why the old link between gold prices and inflation-adjusted interest rates stopped working. He also walks through the four phases of gold pricing, and points you to the free research report and the free beginner seminar where he teaches the chart pattern he uses for timing. None of it is investment advice.
Key Takeaways
- Eight major banks put numbers on gold in two weeks, from a floor near 4,000 up to 6,250.
- Your gold has gone nowhere because the price of gold moves in four phases, and the slow phase comes before the rise.
- Buying gold and earning from gold are different, and most retail investors sell at the worst possible moment.
- Gold prices no longer drop when interest rates after inflation rise, breaking a pattern of 40 years.
- Felix Prehn gives away a research report plus a free two-hour Saturday seminar built for complete beginners.
Gold Price Forecast 2026 From Eight Major Banks
Here is the actual lineup, in the banks’ figures:
- State Street: base case of 4,700 to 5,500, with a bull case up to 6,250.
- Deutsche Bank: 4,600 by year end.
- Goldman Sachs: a note titled “start nibbling”, meaning buy small amounts, with a floor of around 4,000.
- UBS: up to 5,000 by next March.
- BNP Paribas: buying back into gold, and warning of a squeeze, where buyers rush in and the price jumps.
- ANZ: advising a shift to steady buying.
- Jefferies: a separate finding on interest rates, covered further down.
Why does the agreement matter? Big banks get paid to disagree with each other. One says buy, the other says sell, and the disagreement is how markets work. So when eight of them quietly point in one direction in a single two-week period, it deserves your attention.
Deutsche Bank Calls It An Explosive Phase
Deutsche Bank described gold as being in what it calls an explosive phase. The label sounds like marketing, but it is a formal statistical test.
Put simply, the test detects when a price breaks away from every normal way of valuing it, so the usual rules stop applying.
Under Deutsche Bank’s measure, the price of gold has been in the phase since August 2024. It heated up sharply, cooled off since the peak, and still reads clearly above the danger line. In plain terms, even after the pullback you have watched, the upside potential has not gone away.
If the upward pressure is still there, why hasn’t gold prices moved significantly? The answer is the most useful part of the whole gold price forecast.
Why Gold Prices Went Nowhere: The Four Phases
The price of gold does not move in a straight line. It moves in a repeating pattern, the same four gold price phases over and over, and once you know them you can recognise where the market is.
Phase one is panic. A shock hits. Inflation fears jump, central banks cannot cut interest rates, bond yields rise, and the US dollar climbs because everyone is frightened. Higher rates and a stronger dollar are bad for gold in the short term, so right when you would expect gold prices to jump, the price drops instead. Almost everybody panic sells here.
Phase two is the shakeout. The panic slowly settles, and the price of gold drifts steadily lower for weeks or months. It is a painful period, because the average investor looks at the account, sees a loss, decides the purchase was a mistake, and sells.
Phase three is structural. Large institutional buyers arrive: central banks, whole countries, and skilled investors. Every force in the market returns, and the price of gold rises. The painful part is everyday retail investors are still waiting outside the market, too hurt by the shakeout to come back.
Phase four is new all-time highs, above the level before the crisis began. Gold reached new record prices in 1973, 1979, 1991, 2001 and 2022. The crisis was different every time, and the four phases stayed the same.
Based on what he’s seeing, Felix Prehn says gold looks to be working through the shakeout and settling into the quiet, flat stretch which comes before the structural move, not after it.
Knowing the phase you are in is one thing. Acting on it is where most people go wrong.
Gold Ownership Versus Profit From Gold Prices
Many people reading already have some physical gold. Keeping the metal and profiting from it are two very different things, as the last six months have shown.
The investors who get hurt in a setup like the current one are not the ones who never bought. They are the ones who panic sell at the wrong moment, right before the real upward move.
Professionals don’t guess which phase the market is in. They watch for a specific shape on a chart: the price stops dropping, stays on a spot, trades in a narrow range, then makes one specific form just before the structural move begins. Reading it is how they differentiate a brief bounce inside a falling market from a real change in direction.
The same technical analysis works for gold, individual stocks, or index funds. Felix Prehn says it’s the only thing he bases his investment decisions on, and the same is true for the people he knows at banks and hedge funds. He also warns: do not blindly buy because someone tells you to, because you will lose capital.
Reading the pattern answers the timing question. The next section answers a bigger one: what changed in the market to make the price of gold behave so strangely in the first place?
Gold Prices No Longer Drop When Interest Rates Rise
For about 40 years there was one reliable rule. When real interest rates went up, the price of gold went down. Always.
The logic was simple. If a government bond pays you a safe 5%, gold, one of the classic non-yielding assets, looks far less attractive. Money moves from the metal paying nothing to the bond paying a yield.
The rule no longer applies. Real interest rates have been rising steadily, and gold prices have refused to fall with them.
When a 40-year rule stops working, you want to know why, because the reason explains everything else in the market. Felix Prehn covers the full explanation in two free places, and you can get each one before you read on.
Felix Prehn’s Free Gold Report And Beginner Seminar
There are two free resources:
- The research report. Everything covered here, plus a great deal more, is written up at felixfriends.org/gold. Download the document and follow along.
- The Saturday seminar. Felix Prehn teaches the chart pattern live at fasttrackforbeginners.com, Saturday at 9am ET, for about two hours.
The free seminar is built purely for complete beginners, and he has never taught it in the current format before. You need no experience or brokerage account. If you already invest, the session will still be useful, because it explains the basics most self-taught investors skip, like reading a chart and sizing a purchase.
He’ll also show exactly what he is buying and looking to buy in the coming week, and why.
His biggest trading tip: learn the rules, and stop looking for hot tips. Here’s who has been buying gold while everyday savers waited.
Central Bank Buying And China’s Record Gold Demand
In a single month in 2026, China imported the equivalent of what the top 10 gold producing countries dig out in a month combined. If the same rate of imporation continues for a year, the total would reach 60% of all the gold pulled out of the ground worldwide. One country would take 60% of global supply.
Central banks as a group are buying physical gold at a record rate too, with 45 billion dollars in a single quarter, the highest quarterly figure ever recorded.
Their reason is simply about safety. A national savings account in US dollars can be frozen or sanctioned overnight, and physical gold reserves cannot. Gold depends on no other party to keep a promise, and a country can store the metal directly.
A bigger shift explains the buying. For 80 years, a country storing its national savings bought US government debt, and the dollar was the first choice. The old setup is now changing.
The Financial Times laid out the concern plainly: Washington itself has grown nervous about foreign countries using and selling their dollars. Earlier in the year, during a real crisis, countries discovered selling US debt in a panic made the crisis worse and threatened to push prices down further. Gold, though, they could sell instantly, and the sale calmed markets down.
So gold served the purpose US debt used to serve. Central bank policy is drifting from dollar dominance to dollar weakness, out of public view, but real inside the system.
Gold Supply Cannot Rise For 10 To 15 Years
A new gold mine takes 10 to 15 years to reach production, so if central banks keep buying at the current rate, fresh metal simply will not arrive in time to meet global demand. Supply stays limited for more than a decade whatever the price does.
None of the above makes a price rise certain. Gold can correct, and even the most bullish bank on the list admits a volatile, sharp drop is a real possibility inside an explosive phase.
What has changed is the structural picture, and several factors point the same way: more debt, more central bank buying, and less confidence in the purchasing power of the dollar. Every one of the conditions is at a level the market has not seen before.
Which Type Of Investor Will You Be?
There are two types of investor.
Type one sees the pullback in gold prices, decides the opportunity has passed, regrets not selling at the top, and moves on to whatever is popular the coming week.
Type two sees the identical dip, correctly recognises the shakeout, judges the structural setup as firmer than before, and buys steadily at the right moment. Nobody tries to buy at the exact bottom. The goal is to avoid getting it badly wrong.
Felix Prehn’s point is the difference has nothing to do with being clever, rich, or well connected. It comes down to understanding the rules.
He can say so plainly because the Goat Academy takes no sponsors. Nobody pays the academy to promote precious metals or to frighten you, and they turned down a board seat at a gold miner recently for the same reason. His retired Wall Street mentors have taught more than 25,000 students the rules usually reserved for people who get a job in banking.
Uncertainty is easier to handle once you know how to read the chart in front of you.
💡 Join the live seminar at fasttrackforbeginners.com, Saturday 9am ET 👉 Get the free research report at felixfriends.org/gold
Frequently Asked Questions
Does A Middle East Or Iran Conflict Push Gold Prices Up Straight Away?
No. In the panic phase, oil prices spike and inflation rates are expected to climb, so interest rates and the dollar rise and gold dips instead. Selling during the dip is where most investors get it wrong.
Do World Gold Council Figures Drive The Forecast In The Article?
No. The gold price forecast here comes from research published by eight banks, and the central bank buying numbers can be checked on the Winston app.
Do Geopolitical Tensions Change The Long Term Gold Price Forecast?
They add to the pressure, though the four phases still govern the timing. A conflict usually pushes the price down first before the structural buying starts.
Watch Video: The UNTHINKABLE is about to happen to GOLD
Video published on August 6, 2026
Disclaimer
The content on the website is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute and should not be construed as financial or investment advice or an offer to purchase or sell securities. The content is not personalized or tailored to a specific person or group of persons, nor to their personal investment or financial needs. You should consult a financial adviser or other investment professional authorized to provide investment advice. Investing comes with risks, including the risk of loss. Presentations of trades made by Goat Academy or its personnel are not a guarantee that any investment decision made by a student will be successful. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.