Gold prices hit $3100 on the highest level! Wall Street firmly bullish: Morgan Stanley bets on $3500 for Q3! Goldman Sachs boldly predicts it will break through $4000 by the end of the year!

Global investors' safe-haven sentiment has been rising steadily since the beginning of the year, leading to the strongest quarterly price increase in gold in 38 years. The spot gold price has surpassed $3100, reaching a historic high. Since 2025, the price of gold has set a historical record 19 times, with the spot gold rising by about 19% in the first quarter and COMEX gold futures up nearly 20%. On Tuesday, the spot gold price rose to a historic high of $3140 per ounce, marking the fourth consecutive trading day of setting new highs, mainly due to investors rushing towards safe-haven assets to avoid the huge market volatility before Trump introduces his "equal tariffs" policy. Trump previously stated that the equal tariffs to be announced on Wednesday local time will apply to all countries, not just 10 to 15 countries, intensifying concerns of a significant escalation in global trade wars. On Monday, global markets experienced severe fluctuations, with stocks and other global risk assets plummeting, as traders awaited the so-called "equal tariffs" and potential tariff details aimed at certain industries to be announced on Wednesday by the US Eastern Time. The Trump administration has dubbed April 2 as "Liberation Day". However, with bets on interest rate cuts, strong purchases by global central banks, and robust demand for gold ETFs, Wall Street investment institutions have shifted their focus to the next key milestone for gold prices - the super milestone of $3500. Wall Street titans expect that as Trump's tariff policy continues to escalate a new round of global trade wars, the investment frenzy for safe-haven assets will continue to grow, and the Trump administration's continuously escalating tariffs and measures to reverse globalization will continue to erode market confidence in the US dollar. After successfully breaking through $3000, it is very likely that gold will surpass $3500 within the year. In recent speeches by senior Federal Reserve officials, a new term has frequently appeared: uncertainty. This phenomenon can be traced back to last week, when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell mentioned the term "uncertainty" a lot during a press conference on March 19. At the time, the Federal Reserve decided to keep interest rates unchanged, and Powell mentioned "uncertainty" 22 times in his speech, all closely related to the outlook of the Trump administration's policies. Facing Trumps tariff hikes, which may trigger the return of the "inflation monster" to the entire United States, American consumers also say that they are facing increasing uncertainty. Due to the uncertainty of Trump's policies, the latest consumer confidence index released by the World Federation of Large Enterprises has dropped to its lowest level in over four years. Therefore, the significant uncertainty in global trade and economic growth brought about by Trump's globally focused tariff policies is an important logical support for the continuous influx of global funds into gold for safe-haven purposes. Assets such as gold and US bonds, which are considered safe-haven, have been increasingly favored by Wall Street hedge funds and traditional investment institutions since the beginning of the year. The three major Wall Street investment banks are singing the same tune: after gold broke through $3100, the "gold bull market" is far from over As the bull market in gold shows no signs of slowing down and new bullish factors continue to emerge to support the current historic high price, global investment banking giants Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. have updated their forecasts for gold prices for 2025 and beyond. Recently, Wall Street investment giants such as Bank of America Corp and Macquarie have significantly raised their bullish target prices for gold to $3500, with Macquarie even expecting that the significant uncertainty in global trade wars and Trump's policies will drive strong demand from investors for the "safe-haven king" gold, potentially pushing gold to a record high of $3500 per ounce in the third quarter. Amy Gol, a commodity strategist for metals and bulk commodities at Morgan Stanley, said in an interview on Monday that the trend of gold reaching historic highs has been brewing for quite some time, and whenever analysts predict that the price of gold will peak, it will continue to rise. "I think it's because there are two different forces driving gold," the strategist said. "One is physical demand, which really began in 2022 when we saw major central banks significantly increasing their gold holdings. Their buying speed doubled compared to the previous decade, and this trend continues today." "And in recent months, investors' demand for physical gold bars, coins, and even ETFs has started to rise again. This is actually new money flowing into the gold market, and there may still be more potential funds." Gol stated that Morgan Stanley's commodities team also expects the macro environment for gold relative to stocks and bonds to continue to improve. "In the increasingly high-interest rate environment caused by the Fed's continued rate hikes in 2022, gold has faced a difficult macro background, but with the basic establishment of a downward trend in interest rates by global central banks like the Fed and the European Central Bank, this may actually become a bullish or tailwind factor for gold," she said. "As long as physical demand remains strong, and macro factors come into play, we believe that gold has not yet peaked." When asked about the interest rate environment, Gol said that the trend or direction is more important than the actual level of interest rates. "The rates are still relatively high compared to before this rate hike cycle, so the key is whether the trend is turning," she said. "Have our rates peaked and started to generally decline? This will indeed make gold more attractive. This year may see a slight pause, but the overall trend is downward, so the story of physical demand is still important. We also need to see a sustained inflow of ETF funds - gold ETF holdings have just started to rise, we hope to see this trend continue to believe that this upward trend still has momentum." Gol was also asked how high her team believes gold can rise in the current environment, and whether such high levels will limit the upward trend. She acknowledged that a bullish view requires a certain level of price stability as a prerequisite. "Our bullish target price for gold this year is between $3300 and $3400 per ounce," she emphasized. "Whenever commodity prices rise, we do worry about demand destruction, especially when prices rise quickly.For example, the demand for jewelry is about twice the annual purchase amount of the central bank. When buying jewelry, people usually set a budget instead of buying based on the weight of gold, so this effect naturally occurs. At the same time, the supply of recycled gold will also increase."Even central banks, we have seen the Reserve Bank of India suspend gold purchases in December last year and February this year," she added, "It may be necessary to see a certain level of price stability in order to continue large inflows of funds." Max Layton, global commodity research director at Citigroup, stated last weekend in an interview with CNBC that the gold bull market is far from over and he expects gold prices to continue to rise. "The key is... the fundamental drivers of this gold bull market still exist and will continue to push gold prices to our benchmark prediction scenario of $3200 per ounce in the coming months, and if the US economic growth environment is more worrying than our benchmark expectations, gold prices could even reach $3500 before the end of this year," the research director said. When asked about which factors Citigroup believes will drive gold prices to break these unknown historical highs, he acknowledged the strong support of central banks and ETF investors but stated that the huge uncertainty brought by the new US trade policy could increase global investors' demand for gold. "Especially, on April 2nd, President Trump and his cabinet team mentioned some higher tariff numbers," he emphasized. "Such tariffs, even if only half implemented, would pose a significant threat to global economic growth prospects and also affect the US's economic growth and inflation resistance process in the next 3 to 6 months. In our view, this will consolidate the trend that has emerged in the past few years - the gradual slowdown of US economic growth." "In the past, we tended to see an increase in savings rates, and gold ETF demand also increased significantly, both driven by household precautionary savings," he added. "We believe this will drive gold prices to new highs in the next one or two quarters." Is the sky the limit? After breaking $3500, gold may continue to soar to break $4000 It is understood that in a recent research report released by Citigroup, there are three exceptional situations in the current gold market: spot prices are at historical highs, US interest rates are extremely high, and the US dollar is relatively strong. Citigroup predicts in the report that if gold prices break $3500, it is expected that by the fourth quarter of 2025, the price of gold may even reach $3600 per ounce. Citigroup stated in the report that investor sentiment towards gold is still high and concerns about the US stock market and US economic growth will be the main drivers of investment in 2025. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. shared an extremely bullish, albeit low-probability, prediction scenario: that is, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. predicts that by the end of 2025, under the most extreme bullish expectations, the price of gold may break $4000 per ounce. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. has raised its benchmark forecast for the price of gold in 2025 from $3100 to $3300, but under the increasingly severe market risk of the Trump 2.0 era, the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. analysis team believes that under extreme bullish conditions, the price of gold may exceed $4200 at the end of 2025, and even break $4500 in 2026. Hartnett, a strategist at Bank of America Corp., who has been dubbed as the "most accurate strategist on Wall Street," has repeatedly mentioned the "multi-asset allocation" strategy. Since the pandemic era, this strategist has accurately predicted the timeline for the peak of the US stock market several times and has called on investors to allocate to international stock markets and go long on gold. The "BIG strategy" he leads - that is, long-term holding of US Treasury bonds, international stocks other than the US, and gold (Bonds, International, Gold) in 2025 - has indeed brought investors a better overall investment return than the "Trump trade" this year. Wall Street institutions are quickly turning defensive and are inclined to allocate a portion of their positions to long-ignored gold, value stocks, and non-US international stocks. Max Kettner, head of multi-asset strategy at HSBC, downgraded US stocks, investment-grade bonds, and junk bonds to "underweight" last week due to worsening US data and aggressive tariff policies, and further increased holdings of gold to counteract potential stagflation risks. Statistics show that in the past two months (January and February), global major gold ETF assets have accumulated over $12 billion, reaching the largest scale since the same period in 2020. Data shows that the VanEck Physical Gold ETF (RAAX.US) has significantly outperformed the S&P 500 index this year, partially due to the multi-asset solution led by David Schassler, senior multi-asset solutions manager at VanEck, who three years ago led the gold allocation to its maximum level. Schassler even predicts that the price of gold could reach $5000 in the next 18-24 months.