Gold Steadies As Traders Look Beyond Venezuela Risk To US Data
Gold is fresh from posting its best annual performance since 1979, hitting a series of record highs throughout last year.
Gold steadied, as traders looked beyond tensions in Venezuela toward a busy lineup of economic data in the US.
Bullion was near $4,440 an ounce, having risen 2.7% in the previous session following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Uncertainty hangs over governance of the South American nation after President Donald Trump said the US plans to “run” the country.
Traders are turning their attention to a slew of US economic data due this week, headlined by the December jobs report on Friday. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said on Monday that interest rates may be close to a neutral level for the US economy, leaving it up to incoming data to guide the central bank’s actions.
Gold is fresh from posting its best annual performance since 1979, hitting a series of record highs throughout last year with support from central-bank buying and inflows to bullion-backed exchange-traded funds. Three successive rate cuts by the Fed were also a tailwind for precious metals, which don’t pay interest.
The outlook for 2026 is “far more finely balanced,” said Fawad Razaqzada, an analyst at City Index Ltd. “Central-bank buying, the direction of global bond yields, and how much easing is truly left in the pipeline will matter more than ever,” he said in a note.
Bullion is trading roughly $100 below the all-time high of $4,549.92 hit on Dec. 26. Some leading banks forecast further gains this year, especially with the Fed expected to deliver additional interest-rate reductions and Trump reshaping the US central bank’s leadership. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said last month that its base case was for a rally to $4,900 an ounce, with risks to the upside.
In the near term, however, there’s concern that a broad rebalancing of commodity indexes might put pressure on prices. The record-breaking rallies in gold and silver could push passive tracking funds to sell some contracts to match new weightings, beginning Thursday.
Gold edged down 0.2% to $4,440.55 an ounce as of 8:20 a.m. in Singapore. Silver slipped 0.4% to $76.30 an ounce. Platinum and palladium also fell. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, a key gauge of the US currency’s strength, rose 0.1%.
