Bullion fell as much as 1.4% on Tuesday, after losing 1% in the previous session. The metal rose briefly on Friday as modest US inflation data fueled arguments for the Federal Reserve to cut rates. Lower financing costs are a tailwind for unprofitable precious metals.
A wave of speculative buying pushed a multi-year rally to a breaking point in late January, with gold rising to a record above $5,595 an ounce. An abrupt two-day rout at the turn of the month took the metal back to almost $4,400, but it has since recovered about half of its losses. Since then, trading has been choppy.
Many banks – including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – have predicted that prices will resume their upward trend, with the factors that drove gold’s steady rise remaining in place. These include heightened geopolitical tensions, questions about the Fed’s independence and a broader shift away from currencies and government bonds.
“We continue to see two key supportive macro factors for gold: inflation and dollar decline,” Jefferies analysts including Fahad Tariq wrote in a note, raising their 2026 price forecast from $4,200 to $5,000 per ounce. Investors and central banks concerned about these factors “really have only one option: hard assets,” they said.
In the short term, however, downside risk will increase the longer the precious metal stays below $5,000, as this would “further discourage bullish traders in light of recent volatility,” Fawad Razaqzada, an analyst at City Index, said in a note.
Spot gold fell 0.5% to $4,967.82 an ounce at 10:25 a.m. in Singapore. Silver fell 0.4% to $76.30 an ounce. Platinum was little changed, while palladium fell 1.1%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, a gauge of the US currency, was flat after ending the previous session 0.1% higher.
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Published on February 17, 2026
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