Europe Early Edition's 'moment of the week' looks at the rush for gold. The commodity has reached a new historic high and some analysts believe prices will move closer to $5,000 per ounce in 2026.

Wall Street

Gold prices have surged past the $4,000 mark for the first time, marking a significant milestone in the precious metals market. This rally has been attributed to increased central bank and retail investor buying, a weaker U.S. dollar, inflation concerns, and higher debt levels, particularly amid a U.S. government shutdown.

Major investors and analysts remain divided on gold's future, with some, such as Ray Dalio, recommending a substantial portfolio allocation to gold, while others, like Ken Griffin, caution against viewing it as safer than the U.S. dollar. Goldman Sachs has raised its forecast, suggesting gold could reach $4,900 per ounce by the end of next year, and other analysts see continued momentum due to strong ETF inflows and gold's effectiveness as a portfolio diversifier.

Why gold could approach $5,000 next year

It is time for our moment of the week, and it turns out that all the glitters is gold. The price of the precious metals surge past the $4,000 mark this week for the first time in history amid a dizzying rally that also saw the price of silver rise to levels not seen since 2011. Now year to date, gold prices are up by more than half. Now what makes this rally different? Historically, gold has reached key landmarks at times of chaos or uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or just before President Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariffs. However, this time around, the gold rush was driven by a combination of central bank buying, as well as more retail investors purchasing the commodity. On top of that, a weaker U.S. dollar, concerns about inflation and higher debt levels exacerbated by the U.S. government shutdown have also added to the rally. And the surge comes at a time of record highs for U.S. equities, too. So the question is, will the appetite for gold continue? Well, some major investors seem to think so. Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio said that traders should allocate as much as 15 percent of their portfolios to gold, calling it an excellent diversifier. However, Citadel's Ken Griffin warned against investors considering gold as a safer asset than the U.S. dollar. But meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has raised its call on gold this week, suggesting it will hit $4,900 per ounce by December next year. Here are a couple of other calls from analysts that we have been speaking with this week. We've been highly convicted in gold for multiple years now, and we still have that as we look to 26. Right. Nothing's changing. We see prices, you know, going towards $4,400 by the end of the fourth quarter of 26. That being said, gold is, you know, it can be extended on momentum and we've seen very rapid ETF creation, almost 150 tons in September. You know, that was almost $18 billion flowing into gold and gold is a small market. And so that can extend us and, you know, that momentum kind of carries us through. But when we think longer term, nothing structurally has changed. Lots of investors really have struggled this year to find good diversifiers. If you think about it, fixed income for some time, longer than just the past couple of quarters, has not provided the diversification that it used to because of the higher inflation environment maybe structurally that we're in. So gold has proved to be an effective diversifier, I think. If you look at its performance over a long period of time, it's almost at par with equities, but correlation is actually pretty low, it's near zero. So that's a good diversifier.

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Beijing

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A French court on Thursday (October 9) rejected the appeal of a former construction worker found guilty last year of the aggravated rape of Gisele Pelicot, and increased his prison sentence by a year to 10 years, his lawyer said

Paris

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Davao Oriental

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Chicago

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Quito

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Tel Aviv-Yafo

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Washington

Middle East Conflict

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Stockholm

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Kyiv

Ukraine Invasion

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Jerusalem

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Pyongyang

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New York

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Los Angeles International Airport

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Cairo

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Los Angeles

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Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty to two counts in federal court on Wednesday (October 8) after being indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice in September.

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Sharm El-Sheikh

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Mexico City

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Global Tariffs

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Riyadh

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Three U.S.-based scientists have won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on quantum mechanics. The physics award is the second 2025 Nobel Prize to be announced this week.

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Breakdown