Gold is still near 4,000, but the setup is framed as a dubious late-cycle advance with seasonality, a stronger dollar, and another Fed hike all threatening a 2026 correction. The pattern under review is a Q1 low, a summer low, then a possible Q4 low; July may have been the low, but 2018 and 2022 both went lower before year-end. The comparison to 2018 is central: gold’s year-to-date ROI was 944 then versus 928 now, and gold only really accelerated in December after the dollar weakened. The near-term risk is a December-style rate path and a dollar bid, with uncertainty that the Fed could still need to hike again in 2027.
Gold is still around 4,000 after the parabolic advance that began in 2025.
Gold has tended to print a Q1 low, a summer low, then another low in Q4; this year’s sequence has a March wick low, a July low, and a possible Q4 low still forming.
South Korea’s market showed the same rough cadence: a March low, a higher high, a July low, and now a possible Q4 low.
Bitcoin previously followed a bear-market pattern of a Q1 low, then a June/July low, then a Q4 low.
More than a year ago, gold was expected to correct in 2026 as digestion after the 2025 parabola.
A rising dollar has been treated as bearish for gold, and the 2026 metals correction thesis was tied to a higher DXY.
In 2018, when the dollar rose, gold fell; gold’s year-to-date ROI at this point in 2018 was 944 versus 928 now in 2026.
Gold did not really start to pick up steam in 2018 until December.
The midterm-year average says gold normally bottoms around July, with an overlay including one standard deviation; July was a potential low, not necessarily the final low.
In the last two midterm years, 2018 and 2022, July was not the low: gold bounced, then dipped a little lower before the real low arrived.
In both 2018 and 2022, gold started showing strength before December.
Silver already broke below its prior July low, which is why gold may still need to test a lower low even though silver’s move does not force gold to do the same.
Silver is described as possibly back-testing a breakout level from long ago.
Another rate hike is the near-term headwind for gold, with the dollar expected to keep catching a bid for the rest of the year.
Fed odds show about a 90% chance of holding rates steady at the next meeting tomorrow, but over an 80% combined chance of rates rising to 4.25% by December, matching the 2018 playbook of a September hike, a pause around the midterms, then another December hike.