International spot gold annual gains wiped out, future trend depends on extent of damage to Iran's energy infrastructure

International spot gold continued last week's decline at the beginning of this week, with intraday losses exceeding 4%. Today's decline has completely erased annual gains. Precious metals analyst Bernard Dahdah believes the current trend hinges on the direction of Middle East conflicts and whether the Strait of Hormuz can resume operations. If Iranian energy facilities suffer further damage and the conflict becomes prolonged, energy prices being highly sticky could even force the Federal Reserve to shift toward rate hikes. In this extreme scenario, gold prices could be dragged down to the $4,000 low.

In contrast to market pessimism, Saxo Bank analysts remain cautiously optimistic on gold's medium-term trend. The bank pointed out that this round of shocks presents obvious stagflationary characteristics: high inflation coupled with sluggish economic growth, leaving global central banks in a dilemma. In this environment, gold's core position as a hedge against "currency depreciation" and U.S. dollar credit risks remains firm, and is underpinned by the long-term support of the "de-dollarization" process and central banks' trend toward diversifying reserves.#Gate13周年全球庆典 #黄金创43年来最大单周跌幅 #特朗普向伊朗发出48小时最后通牒 #中东局势引发全球市场暴跌