Central Bank Buying Fails to Halt Gold’s Worst Quarter in 13 Years
Published on 07/03/2026 at 10:12 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Gold investors endured their bleakest three months since the spring of 2013 during the April-to-June period, with the precious metal shedding roughly 16% of its value. June alone delivered an 11.7% drubbing, adding to a 1.8% decline in May. By the end of the quarter, the spot price had touched $3,942 an ounce — the lowest since early November 2025.
Yet even as the yellow metal was being pummelled by a hawkish pivot at the Federal Reserve and a resurgent dollar, the world’s central banks were quietly adding to their hoards. In May alone, monetary authorities purchased a net 41 tonnes of gold, with Poland leading the charge at 18 tonnes and China also among the most active buyers. The buying spree is part of a broader pattern: first-quarter net purchases totalled 244 tonnes, comfortably above both the previous quarter and the five-year average.
The disconnect between official-sector appetite and market price action has rarely been starker. While institutional buyers treat the dip as an opportunity to diversify reserves, traders have been fixated on the hawkish signals from new Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh, who has effectively ruled out near-term rate cuts. That stance strengthens the dollar and punishes non-yielding assets like gold.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Gold?
Technical analysts are now flagging the risk of a so-called death cross, where the 50-day moving average slides below the 200-day average. The spot price currently sits at $4,016.36 — roughly 25.9% below its all-time high from early 2026 and beneath the 50-day moving average of $4,425.61. The relative strength index of 42.6 signals neither overbought nor oversold extremes, leaving room for further downside.
Wall Street is also recalibrating its expectations. Goldman Sachs has slashed its year-end 2026 price target from $5,400 to $4,900 a troy ounce, citing the likelihood that the Fed will hold rates steady for the remainder of the year. Yet the bank remains constructive over the longer haul, pointing to central bank purchases that, while down from the monthly peak of 67 tonnes in 2024, are still running at roughly three times the pace seen before the freezing of Russian assets in 2022.
The $4,000 level has emerged as a critical line in the sand. A decisive break below that psychological threshold could accelerate selling, while a successful defence might attract bargain hunters, particularly if the jobs data due later this week reinforce expectations of a slowing US economy. The quarterly numbers from the World Gold Council for June will also be closely watched in the weeks ahead: if central banks maintained their buying tempo even as gold suffered its worst quarter in over a decade, that institutional floor could prove more resilient than the chart patterns suggest.
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