According to the Zhitong Finance APP, global investors' risk aversion has continued to rise this year, leading to the strongest single-quarter increase in gold prices in 38 years. Spot gold has surpassed $3,100, setting a new historical high. Since 2025, gold prices have broken historical records 19 times, with spot gold rising approximately 19% in the first quarter and COMEX gold futures increasing nearly 20%. On Tuesday, the spot gold price rose to a historical high of $3,140 per ounce, marking four consecutive trading days of record highs, primarily due to investors flocking to safe-haven assets to avoid significant market volatility ahead of Trump's upcoming &#34;reciprocal tariff&#34; policy.
Trump previously stated that the reciprocal tariffs to be announced on Wednesday local time would apply to all countries, not just 10 to 15 countries, heightening market concerns about a significant escalation in the global trade war. On Monday, global markets experienced severe volatility again, with stocks and other global risk assets sharply declining, as traders braced for the so-called &#34;reciprocal tariffs&#34; and potential tariff details targeting certain specific industries to be announced on Wednesday. The Trump administration has dubbed April 2 as &#34;Liberation Day,&#34; which has attracted widespread attention.
However, with bets on interest rate cuts, strong global central bank purchases, and robust demand for gold ETFs supporting the upward trend in gold prices, Wall Street investment institutions have already focused on the next key milestone for gold prices—$3,500. Moreover, Wall Street giants expect that as Trump's tariff policies continue to escalate, the new round of the global trade war will drive a surge in safe-haven investments, and the Trump administration's ongoing escalation of tariffs and measures aimed at reversing globalization will continue to severely impact market confidence in the dollar. After successfully breaking through $3,000, the likelihood of gold surpassing $3,500 within the year is very high.
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In recent remarks 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 extensively during a press conference on March 19. At that time, the Federal Reserve decided to keep interest rates unchanged, and Powell mentioned &#34;uncertainty&#34; 22 times in his speech, all closely related to the policy outlook of the Trump administration.
Faced with the possibility that the Trump administration's tariff measures could reignite the &#34;inflation monster&#34; across the United States, American consumers have also indicated that they are facing increasing uncertainty. Due to the uncertainty surrounding Trump's policies, the latest consumer confidence index released by the Conference Board has fallen to its lowest level in over four years.
Therefore, the significant uncertainty brought about by Trump's global tariff policies regarding global trade and economic growth is also an important logical support for the continuous influx of global funds into gold seeking safe-haven investments. Assets with safe-haven attributes, such as gold and U.S. Treasury bonds, have increasingly favored by Wall Street hedge funds and traditional investment institutions since the beginning of this year.
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Three major Wall Street investment banks sing bullish: After gold breaks through $3,100, the &#34;gold price bull market&#34; is far from over.
As the bull market for gold shows no signs of slowing down, and new favorable factors continue to emerge to support the current historical high prices, global investment banking giants Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs have all updated their gold price forecasts for 2025 and beyond.
Not long ago, Bank of America and Macquarie, among other Wall Street investment giants, had significantly raised their bullish target price for gold to $3,500. Macquarie even predicts that the enormous uncertainty surrounding the global trade war and Trump’s policies will drive strong demand for gold, the &#34;king of safe havens,&#34; potentially pushing gold to a record high of $3,500 per ounce in the third quarter.
Amy Gold, a metals and mining commodities strategist at Morgan Stanley, stated in an interview on Monday that the trend of gold reaching historical highs has been brewing for quite some time, and whenever analysts predict that gold prices will peak, they always end up rising further.
&#34;I think this is because there are two different forces driving gold,&#34; the strategist said. &#34;One is physical demand, which really began in 2022 when we saw major central banks around the world significantly increase their gold holdings. Their purchasing speed has doubled compared to the previous decade, and this trend continues to this day.&#34; &#34;In recent months, investor demand for physical gold bars, coins, and even ETFs has also begun to rebound. This is actually new capital flowing into the gold market, and it can be said that there is still more potential capital to come.&#34;
Gold stated that Morgan Stanley's commodities team also expects the macro environment for gold relative to stocks and bonds to continue to improve. &#34;In the high-interest rate environment of 2022, where the Federal Reserve continued to raise interest rates, gold faced a challenging macro backdrop, but as the downward trend in interest rates from global central banks like the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank has basically been established, this could actually become a favorable or tailwind factor for gold,&#34; she said.
&#34;As long as physical demand remains strong and macro factors come into play, we believe gold has not yet peaked.&#34; When asked about the interest rate environment, Gold stated that the current trend or direction is more important than the actual level of interest rates themselves.
&#34;Interest rates are still relatively high compared to the levels before this round of rate hikes, so the key is whether the trend is turning,&#34; she said. &#34;Have our interest rates peaked and begun to decline broadly? This would indeed make gold more attractive. There may be a slight pause this year, but the overall trend of interest rates is downward, so the story of physical demand remains important. We also need to see continued inflows into ETFs—gold ETF holdings have just begun to rebound, and we hope to see this trend continue to believe that this round of gains still has momentum.&#34;
Gold was also asked how high her team believes gold can rise in the current environment and whether such high levels would self-limit the upward trend. She acknowledged that a bullish outlook requires a certain level of price stability as a prerequisite.
&#34;Our bullish target price for gold is $3,300 to $3,400 per ounce this year,&#34; she emphasized. &#34;Whenever commodity prices rise, we do worry about demand destruction, especially when prices rise rapidly.&#34;
For example, jewelry demand is about twice the annual purchase volume of central banks, and when purchasing jewelry, people usually set a budget rather than buying based on the weight of gold, so this effect naturally occurs. At the same time, recycled supply will also increase.&#34;
&#34;Even central banks, we saw the Reserve Bank of India pause gold purchases in December last year and February this year,&#34; she added, &#34; it may take some price stability to allow funds to continue to flow in significantly.&#34;
Max Layton, head of global commodities research at Citigroup, pointed out in an interview with CNBC last weekend that the gold bull market is far from over, and gold prices are expected to continue to rise.
&#34;The key is... the fundamental drivers of this gold bull market still exist and will continue to push gold prices to $3,200 per ounce in our baseline forecast scenario over the next few months, and if the U.S. economic growth environment is more concerning than our baseline expectations, gold prices could even reach $3,500 before the end of this year,&#34; the research director stated.
When asked what factors Citigroup believes will drive gold prices to break through these unknown historical highs, he acknowledged the strong support from central banks and ETF investors but stated that the significant uncertainty brought about by the new round of U.S. trade policies could become a new impetus for global investors to increase their gold purchases.
&#34;Especially since Trump and his cabinet team mentioned some higher tariff numbers on April 2,&#34; he emphasized. &#34;Such tariffs, even if only half implemented, would pose a significant threat to the global economic growth outlook and would also affect the U.S. economic growth and anti-inflation process in the next 3 to 6 months. In our view, this will reinforce the trend that has emerged over the past few years—gradual slowing of U.S. economic growth.&#34;
&#34;In the past, we tended to see an increase in the savings rate, and gold ETF demand also surged, both driven by households' precautionary savings,&#34; he added, &#34;we believe this will drive gold prices to new highs in the next one or two quarters.&#34;
Is the sky the limit? After breaking $3,500, gold may continue to surge towards breaking $4,000.
According to reports, Citigroup's latest research report pointed out that the current gold market has three abnormal situations: spot prices are at historical highs, U.S. interest rates are extremely high, and the dollar is relatively strong. Citigroup's report predicts that if gold prices break $3,500, they could even reach $3,600 per ounce by the fourth quarter of 2025. The report stated that market sentiment for gold investment remains high, and concerns about the U.S. stock market and U.S. economic growth are the main drivers of investment in 2025.
Goldman Sachs shared an extremely bullish, albeit less likely, forecast scenario: that is, Goldman Sachs predicts that by the end of 2025, under the most extreme bullish expectations, gold prices could break $4,000 per ounce.
Goldman Sachs has raised its baseline forecast for gold prices in 2025 from the previous $3,100 to $3,300, but under the increasingly severe market risk aversion pressure in the Trump 2.0 era, Goldman Sachs' analysis team believes that in extreme bullish scenarios, gold prices could exceed $4,200 by the end of 2025.
It may even break $4,500 in 2026.**
Hartnett, a strategist at Bank of America who holds the title of &#34;Wall Street's most accurate strategist,&#34; has repeatedly mentioned the &#34;diversified allocation&#34; strategy. This strategist, who has accurately predicted the timeline for the peak of U.S. stocks multiple times since the pandemic, has called on investors this year to allocate to international stock markets and go long on gold. It has been proven that his &#34;BIG strategy&#34;—which involves holding U.S. Treasuries, international stocks outside the U.S., and gold (Bonds, International, Gold) for the long term in 2025—can indeed provide investors with a significantly higher overall investment return this year compared to the &#34;Trump trade.&#34;
Wall Street institutions are quickly shifting to a defensive stance, opting to allocate a portion of their positions to long-ignored gold, value stocks, and non-U.S. international stocks. Max Kettner, HSBC's head of multi-asset strategy, downgraded U.S. stocks, investment-grade bonds, and junk bonds to &#34;underweight&#34; last week due to deteriorating U.S. data and aggressive tariff policies, and further increased gold holdings to address stagflation risks.
Statistics show that in the past two months (January and February), major global gold ETFs have accumulated over $12 billion, marking the largest scale since the same period in 2020. Data indicates that the VanEck Physical Asset ETF (RAAX.US) has significantly outperformed the S&amp;P 500 index this year, partly due to David Schassler, head of multi-asset solutions at Wall Street asset management giant VanEck, who led the allocation of gold to maximum levels three years ago. Schassler even predicts that gold prices could reach $5,000 in the next 18-24 months.

Gold prices have surpassed $3,100, marking the strongest quarterly increase in 38 years. Wall Street institutions such as Macquarie and Goldman Sachs are optimistic about future gains, predicting that gold prices will head straight for $3,500, and may even break $4,000 by the end of the year. The heightened risk aversion among global investors has driven up gold prices, especially against the backdrop of Trump's imminent announcement of reciprocal tariff policies. Concerns about the escalation of the global trade war have intensified, leading to strong demand for gold ETFs, and gold prices are expected to continue rising

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Goldman Sachs

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Morgan Stanley

Gold stands at a high of $3,100! Wall Street remains bullish: Macquarie bets on Q3 aiming for $3,500! Goldman Sachs boldly claims it may break $4,000 by the end of the year!