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Gold’s Wild Q1 Splits the Big Banks - Who’s Right?
JP Morgan, ANZ, and HSBC are publishing meaningfully divergent gold forecasts for 2026, and after a quarter that saw prices swing from $4,100 to $5,405, the disagreement tells us more than any single target.
What to know
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Gold is trading at $4,564/oz after a 12.7% monthly drawdown from its $5,405 peak, yet remains up 3.6% on the week - creating a split-screen market that’s dividing major bank forecasters.
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JP Morgan, ANZ, and HSBC have staked out notably different positions on gold’s trajectory for the remainder of 2026, reflecting genuine uncertainty about macro direction.
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The gold/silver ratio has compressed to 64.2, with silver down over 23% month-on-month - suggesting the correction has hit risk-adjacent metals harder than gold itself.
What happened
Gold has just lived through one of the most volatile quarters in recent memory. The gold price touched $5,405 earlier this month before plunging nearly 13% to trade around $4,564 today. That $1,300 range in a single month is extraordinary - the kind of price action that forces analysts to either double down on their convictions or tear up their models entirely.
Against this backdrop, the major investment banks are publishing sharply divergent outlooks. JP Morgan, ANZ, and HSBC have each laid out distinct visions for where gold heads from here, and the spread between their views is wider than we typically see from institutions that usually cluster within a few percentage points of each other.
This week’s 3.6% bounce off the lows adds another layer of complexity. Is this a dead cat bounce within a deeper correction, or the start of a recovery towards those $5,000-plus levels? The banks clearly disagree.
Who’s involved
JP Morgan has historically been among the more bullish voices on gold, and their positioning through Q1 suggests that conviction hasn’t wavered despite the drawdown. ANZ has taken a more measured stance, while HSBC - often the most conservative of the three on precious metals - appears to be leaning into a view that the correction has further to run.
Central banks remain the elephant in the room. Their sustained purchasing programmes over the past two years have been the single most important structural driver of gold’s ascent from $2,000 to $5,000-plus. Whether that buying continues at the same pace is arguably more important than any Wall Street forecast.
Retail investors are also worth watching. The sharp drawdown from $5,405 will have caught leveraged positions off guard, and the liquidation pressure visible in the move from peak to trough suggests speculative length was significant.
Why it matters
When major banks diverge this sharply, it typically signals a genuine inflection point rather than a routine disagreement about decimal places. The last time we saw comparable forecast dispersion was in late 2023, just before gold began its run from $2,000 to current levels.
The monthly drawdown of 12.7% is severe but not unprecedented in a secular bull market. Gold corrected roughly 15% in mid-2024 before resuming its uptrend. The question is whether the macro conditions that fuelled the rally - persistent inflation concerns, geopolitical fragmentation, central bank diversification away from dollar reserves - remain intact.
Silver’s 23% monthly decline is telling. The gold/silver ratio at 64.2 has actually compressed from higher levels, but silver’s outsized losses confirm this was a risk-reduction event rather than a fundamental repricing of precious metals. When silver falls harder than gold, it’s leveraged money exiting, not a change in the underlying thesis.
Today’s Michigan Consumer Sentiment reading could add near-term fuel. Weak sentiment tends to support gold through the rate-cut expectations channel, while stronger data could extend the correction.
What to watch
The $4,400 level is the immediate line in the sand - gold tested it today before bouncing to $4,564. A sustained break below would validate the more bearish bank forecasts and open the path towards the monthly low of $4,100. On the upside, reclaiming $4,800 would suggest the correction is complete and bring the bulls back into the conversation about retesting $5,000. Central bank purchase data for Q1 (due in April) will matter, as will the trajectory of US real yields as the Fed navigates its next move.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
