The gold price prediction that has dominated the last month of commentary is $10,000 an ounce, and the tape has spent 2026 arguing the opposite case. Spot gold trades at $4,286.20 per troy ounce as of 08:59 UTC on 26 September 2026, which is 20.7% below the record LBMA Gold Price PM auction fix of $5,405.00 set on 29 January 2026. That is a bear market by the conventional definition, reached while the US 10-year Treasury inflation-protected real yield closed at 2.85% on 24 September, its highest level since 24 November 2008 according to the US Treasury daily real yield curve. Gold has not defied the textbook this year. It has obeyed it.
Here is the part the $10,000 forecasts leave out. The pillar those forecasts lean on hardest, official-sector buying, was weaker in the first half of 2026 than in any first half since 2022. The World Gold Council recorded a record second quarter of 288.9 tonnes, and that headline has been quoted everywhere, but the same report puts H1 net central bank demand at 345t and calls it the lowest first half since 2022. The only first half of the last four years that was thinner was 2022’s 241t. On reported data the gap is starker still: roughly 130t bought year-to-date to end-July against roughly 160t over the same stretch of 2025. The official bid is real, it is broad, and it is decelerating. Pricing gold as though a 289-tonne quarter is the run rate means pricing a number the full-year data does not support.
Key facts
- Spot gold $4,286.20 per troy ounce, 20.7% below the record PM fix and down 1.9% year-to-date, though still up 14.9% on twelve months ago — gold-api.com and LBMA, 26 September 2026
- Record LBMA PM fix $5,405.00 on 29 January 2026; the lowest fix since then was $3,993.55 on 16 July 2026 — LBMA
- US 10-year real yield 2.85% on 24 September 2026, the highest since 24 November 2008, when it printed 3.11% — US Treasury
- The FOMC raised the target range 25bp to 3.75%–4.00% on 16 September 2026 and said inflation “remains elevated” — Federal Reserve
- The September median projection puts the federal funds rate at 4.1% at end-2026 and 4.1% again at end-2027, revised up from 3.8% and 3.6% in June — Federal Reserve SEP, 16 September 2026
- Central bank net buying was 23t in July 2026, with China taking 20t in its 21st consecutive month of purchases — World Gold Council, 3 September 2026
- The gold-silver ratio sits near 66.5, with silver at $64.42 — gold-api.com, 26 September 2026
What is actually happening to the gold price
Having tracked the LBMA afternoon fix daily through this cycle, the shape of 2026 is unusually legible. Gold peaked on 29 January at $5,405.00. It fell for five months, bottoming at $3,993.55 on 16 July. It then rallied hard through August, reaching $4,663.70 on the 28th, and has been grinding lower ever since. The 25 September fix was $4,261.05.
The important detail is not the drawdown, it is the sequence. August’s highest fix was $4,663.70. September’s highest fix was $4,467.15. That is a lower high, and it arrived after the rally that was supposed to mark the end of the correction. Gold is down 7.5% against where it fixed a month ago and down 1.9% against where it started the year at $4,367.80 on 30 December 2025. A metal that is negative year-to-date in a year of elevated inflation is telling you something specific about what is driving it.
What is driving it is the real rate of return on the alternative. Gold pays no coupon, so its opportunity cost is whatever a risk-free inflation-linked bond yields. When that number was negative, as it was for most of 2020 and 2021, holding gold cost nothing. At 2.85% it costs a great deal. The 2023 tightening cycle, widely described at the time as brutal for precious metals, peaked at a 10-year real yield of just 2.52% on 25 October 2023. The current level is 33 basis points above that, and the entire history of the Treasury real yield series since 2003 contains only 23 daily observations at or above 2.85%. Twenty-two of them fall in October and November 2008.
Set against that, the resilience is arguably the story. A 21% drawdown from a record, with the cost of carry at a 17-year high, is a more orderly outcome than the mechanical relationship alone would predict. Something is absorbing the supply. That something is the official sector, and it is worth being precise about how much of it there is.
What central banks are actually doing
The World Gold Council’s Q2 2026 Gold Demand Trends, published on 30 July 2026, reported net central bank purchases of 288.9 tonnes against 177.9t in Q2 2025, a 62% year-on-year increase and what the Council called “a record high for a second quarter”. That figure is a fivefold jump on Q1’s revised estimate of 57t. The Council’s own framing of the half-year is more sober: H1 net demand of 345t was “the lowest for a first half since 2022”.
The composition matters as much as the total. The National Bank of Poland added 51t in Q2, taking reserves to 632t by end-June and 640t by end-July, against a stated target of 700t, with gold now around 28% of Polish reserves. The People’s Bank of China added 33t in Q2, its largest quarterly addition since Q4 2023, and a further 20t in July in what the Council recorded as its 21st consecutive month of buying, lifting holdings to roughly 2,366t, or 8% of total reserves. The Czech National Bank bought in its 41st consecutive month. The Bank of Korea made its first gold allocation in thirteen years, an estimated $250mn or roughly 2t, executed through gold-backed ETFs.
The sell side of the ledger is where the consensus narrative gets uncomfortable. The Central Bank of Russia sold 22t in Q2 and 50t year-to-date, leaving holdings at 2,277t. Turkey has sold 85t year-to-date. And the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, which holds roughly 431t amounting to 87% of its total reserves, sold 1t in July even as its year-to-date purchases stood at 40t.
Uzbekistan’s governor put the position more candidly than most officials would. Speaking as the central bank engaged with American money managers, Timur Ishmetov, Governor of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, said that while “gold has turned out to be the best investment so far”, the bank is looking at potential sales of gold at “favourable prices” as part of its overall reserve management plan. When the reserve manager with the highest gold concentration in the world starts talking publicly about price-sensitive selling, the official bid has an identifiable ceiling.
Against that, sentiment among the same institutions remains strong. The Council’s latest Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey found 89% of respondents expected global reserves to rise over the next year, and a record 45% expected to increase their own holdings. Intention and execution have diverged before, and the reported year-to-date numbers say they are diverging now.
The price, the levels and the chart
The cross-asset read supports the rates explanation rather than a gold-specific one. Silver trades at $64.42, putting the gold-silver ratio near 66.5, close to where the ratio sat around 65.8 earlier this month and well inside its normal band. A monetary panic bid for gold usually shows up as a collapsing ratio as gold outruns silver. It is not happening. Silver’s own setup, covered in our silver price analysis at $64 against a 19-year high in yields, is being driven by the same rates story. So is the Brent complex above $100. This is a macro regime, not a metals regime.
| Scenario | Level | Move from $4,286 | What has to happen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bull | $4,750 | +10.8% | Real yields retreat below 2.40%; a credit or equity event forces a policy rethink; reported official buying re-accelerates |
| Base | $4,300 | +0.3% | The Fed delivers the 4.1% median, inflation stays near 3%, and central bank demand runs at the current 20t–30t monthly pace |
| Bear | $3,850 | -10.2% | Real yields hold above 2.85%, the 2027 median moves higher again, and Russia, Turkey and Uzbekistan add to reported sales |
The policy tension that sets the floor and the ceiling
On 16 September 2026 the FOMC raised the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 3.75% to 4.00%. The statement was unusually direct: “Inflation remains elevated. Today’s policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee’s 2 percent goal. The Committee will deliver price stability.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh was blunter still at the press conference that followed. “The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” he said, adding that he “would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive” and that the Committee is “committed to a discipline, not to a decision”. He declined to offer a projection of his own or any forward guidance.
The projections his colleagues did submit are the harder number for gold. The September median has the federal funds rate at 4.1% at the end of 2026 and 4.1% again at the end of 2027. In June those medians were 3.8% and 3.6%. A 50 basis point upward revision to the 2027 median in a single quarter is a substantial repricing of the policy path, and the same document pushes the return to the 2% inflation target out to 2029. Our coverage of the dot plot and how the committee splits on a further increase sets out the distribution behind that median, and prediction market pricing for an October move shows how the market has absorbed it.
For a non-yielding asset, that projection path is the whole argument. A committee that expects to hold near 4% for two more years, against inflation the same document expects to fall to 2.3% next year, is projecting a positive real policy rate sustained for longer than gold has faced at any point in this cycle. The structural counterweight is that persistent above-target inflation, five years of it by Warsh’s own count, is precisely the condition that historically drives reserve diversification. Both forces are live. The first dominates the next two quarters; the second is why the floor is higher than the rates model alone suggests.
The call: base $4,300, bull $4,750, bear $3,850
Base case, $4,300, roughly 45% probability. This is gold doing very little. The Fed delivers one more increase to the 4.1% median and stops. Real yields plateau between 2.60% and 2.90%. Central bank buying continues at the 20t to 30t monthly pace reported through July, which is enough to absorb investor selling but not enough to force a re-rating. Gold spends the fourth quarter in a $4,100 to $4,500 range and fixes near where it is now.
Bull case, $4,750, roughly 22% probability. This requires the rates picture to break. The trigger is most plausibly a credit or equity accident that makes a 4.1% terminal rate untenable, pulling the 10-year real yield back under 2.40% and restoring the negative carry that powered the 2025 advance. A second, slower route is official-sector re-acceleration: if the 45% of surveyed central banks who said they intend to add actually execute, reported monthly buying moves back above 30t and the August high of $4,663.70 comes under attack. $4,750 clears it.
Bear case, $3,850, roughly 33% probability. Real yields hold at or above 2.85% and the 2027 median drifts higher at the December meeting. The September lower high is confirmed as a lower high and the July low of $3,993.55 is retested. Critically, that level has already traded this year, so it needs no new information to be reached. Russia and Turkey continue selling, Uzbekistan converts its stated interest in “favourable prices” into actual disposals, and the marginal official buyer becomes a marginal official seller. $3,850 is roughly 4% below the July low.
What would change my mind. On the bear side, a single monthly WGC print above 40t of net reported buying, or a 10-year real yield below 2.40%, would invalidate the structure of the downside case rather than merely delay it. On the bull side, a December SEP that lifts the 2027 median again would make $4,750 very hard to reach on any horizon short of a year. The level I am watching most closely is not a gold level at all. It is 2.85% on the 10-year real yield. Gold’s behaviour either side of it has been the most reliable signal of this cycle.
One note on the crowd. The loudest gold price prediction of the past month has been Jim Rickards arguing for $10,000 “sooner than people expect” in a GoldSilver interview that drew nearly 190,000 views, alongside a widely shared r/Gold thread on a $155,000 revaluation of US reserves whose top comment noted drily that in such a world “a wheelbarrow of paper dollars wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread”. Retail conviction is running at a peak while the price makes lower highs and the official bid thins. That divergence is not a forecast on its own, but it is the condition under which the bear case gets its fuel.
Frequently asked questions
What is the gold price right now?
Spot gold traded at $4,286.20 per troy ounce at 08:59 UTC on 26 September 2026. The most recent LBMA Gold Price PM auction fix, the benchmark most institutional contracts settle against, was $4,261.05 on 25 September 2026. COMEX December 2026 futures were quoted at $4,320.50, a normal carry premium to spot rather than a separate signal.
Why is gold falling when inflation is still above target?
Because gold competes with the real yield on inflation-protected bonds, not with the inflation rate itself. The US 10-year real yield reached 2.85% on 24 September 2026, its highest since November 2008. That is the opportunity cost of holding an asset that pays no coupon, and it has risen faster than inflation expectations have.
Are central banks still buying gold?
Yes, but more slowly. The World Gold Council recorded 23t of net buying in July 2026 and roughly 130t year-to-date on reported data, against about 160t over the same period in 2025. Q2 was a record second quarter at 288.9t, yet first-half demand of 345t was the lowest for any first half since 2022.
How far is gold from its record high?
The record LBMA PM fix was $5,405.00 on 29 January 2026. At $4,286.20, spot sits 20.7% below it, which meets the conventional definition of a bear market. The lowest fix since the record was $3,993.55 on 16 July 2026, so the current price is about 7% above this year’s trough.
What would push gold back above $4,750?
A fall in the 10-year real yield below roughly 2.40%, most plausibly triggered by a credit or equity event that forces the Fed off its projected path, or a genuine re-acceleration in reported central bank buying above 30t a month. Absent one of those, the September lower high at $4,467.15 is the nearer obstacle.
What does the gold-silver ratio say about this move?
At a gold price of $4,286.20 and silver at $64.42, the ratio is near 66.5, inside its normal historical band. In a genuine monetary stress episode the ratio usually compresses as gold outpaces silver. Its stability suggests the current move is being driven by interest rates across the whole commodity complex rather than by demand for gold specifically.
This article is analysis and market commentary, not investment advice. Precious metals and derivatives on them are volatile and your capital is at risk. Price levels, probabilities and scenarios set out above are the author’s assessment of publicly available data as at 26 September 2026 and may be wrong.