Happy Friday, merchants. Welcome to our weekly market summary, where we take a look back at these last five trading days focusing on the market news, economic data and headlines that had the biggest impact on the prices of gold and other key correlated assets, and that may continue to do so in the future.
Here’s what you need to know:
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Gold briefly hit new all-time highs this week, repeatedly reclaiming $4,600 an ounce and setting a new record near midweek.
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Even with a weaker core CPI and stronger retail sales, risk-off sentiment remained firm enough into Wednesday to keep gold supported.
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A resurgence in the US dollar in the second half of the week put pressure on gold, causing a pullback from highs and refocusing the fight around $4,600.
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A softening of the immediate geopolitical escalation late in the week helped cool security supply, leading to a sharp but short-lived decline before gold stabilized below $4,600.
This week’s gold price development has been more up-and-down than what became the status quo in Q4 2025. While most weekly snapshots reflected prices rising steadily over five sessions, or (less frequently) falling sharply in a single session before stabilizing for the rest of the week, over the past five days, gold has briefly reached new all-time highs before pulling back on Thursday and Friday.
However, it is important to note that spot and futures prices still remain near record highs.
Of course, there was a strong rally in gold as a measure of risk aversion when markets opened Sunday night, which persisted into Monday morning trading, in reaction to the Federal Reserve’s weekend announcement that its officials were under investigation by the Justice Department.
Under reasonable concerns of instability, the yellow metal surpassed $4,600/oz for a period of trading on Monday (a level we had previously noted as apparent resistance) before moderating just below that level from a high near $4,620.
Over the past five days, there has been little to no effort to lower the temperature on this new, or at least recently intensified, story. Rather, Washington’s overheated rhetoric about the possibility of military intervention in the growing civil conflict in Iran and/or the US executive’s interest in owning Greenland as a US territory has turned investors’ heads.
Regardless of where one tries (or is forced to) focus one’s attention, uncertainty over market stability and the complete lack of effort to cool any agglomeration of geopolitical tensions continued to support gold as a safe haven asset.
As a result, spot gold prices have returned above $4,600 several times this week, culminating in another all-time high on Wednesday of $4,638.
The level of risk-off sentiment through Wednesday was high enough to maintain this bet on gold even as December core CPI (+2.6% vs. +2.7% exp.) and November retail sales growth (+0.6% vs. +0.4% exp.) exceeded expectations, both justifying the rush for the FOMC to continue lowering interest rates.
And while the motivations for this widespread sense of uncertainty have remained constant, a key change in the second half of this week has been the resurgence of the US dollar; perhaps due in large part to the better-than-expected US economic data released this week (as well as the macabre assumption that if one or two of the current geopolitical messes really go wrong, the US would probably be the highest among the low kings in the collapsing world order).
Whatever the stated reason, this renewed dollar strength put immediate pressure on traditional non-dollar safe havens such as gold, pushing the precious metal from highs to the $4,600 level on Thursday.
A pressure release will finally occur on Friday. As the United States backed away from suggestions that it might intervene militarily in Iran (intensifying what is arguably the group’s biggest powder keg), investors took a breath and loosened their grip on purely security plays.
While this has not translated into a sudden change in risk appetite (US stocks are up only slightly at lunchtime), gold prices were briefly hit with a drop of more than $50 an ounce by mid-morning.
That said, it now appears to be a dissonant combination of attraction and resistance for the gold spot price at $4,600. The yellow metal recovered to $4,590 an ounce an hour after the sudden sell-off, but so far appears to have run out of buyers before attempting to rally from there.
This past weekend demonstrated that we cannot assume that the situation at the close of Friday will carry over to Sunday night or Monday morning. But for now, we will be watching early next week to judge whether there is appetite on the part of investors and managers to keep gold prices at the current level without a clear path above $4,600.
From a data perspective, we will get that full PCE Price Index reading on (lagged) inflation starting in November 2025, and we expect to see more public comments from key FOMC officials.
In the meantime, traders, I hope you can go out and safely enjoy your weekend over the next few days. After that, we’ll see you here next week for another market recap.
