贵金属特别报告：美联储鹰派立场打压金价

Precious Special Report Hawks drive out bulls •Fed repricing together with resilient US macro datahas played theprimary role in pushing gold lower. This new ‘problem’ became evidentonce goldbegan diverging from oil last month.Ourrevisedbase case isfor gold to reach USD 4,800/oz in Q4,consistent with an indefinite Fedhold, while a risk caseofpricing 3-4 Fed hikesmaybringgoldtoUSD3,800/oz. •The first FOMC meeting with Chair Warshrevealed no resistance tomarketpricing for hikes.The FOMC press conference underlinedpotentialfor a further hawkish shift,supported by a Taylor ruleprescription some80 bpshigher. On the dovish side, our house callremains for an indefinite hold near neutral, market-based measures ofinflation expectations aredeclining with oil,and the SEP dot plotmedianshowed only one hike followed by a reversal next yearcomparedwith48bps priced by the market throughMar’27. •The usual suspects which might provide support via investment demandare notably absent, for now.The dip in goldafter the May NFP reportwasmet by continued ETF selling,whilefutures open interestsitsat a 17-yearlow, andfutures net long positioning nearer the year’s low than high. •TheChina premium over Comex has reversed to a small discount,suggestingthatChina gold importswill notbe a support for the market.The rationale could be thatChinese investors have less reason todiversify into goldas CNY remains on a strengthening trend,whileevidencealsopoints to apossibleproperty market bottoming.For India,the recent hike of gold import VATis likely tosuppressdemand. •The one pillar which remains strong is central bank demand, and weexpect this to be the case for some time to come as EM central bankscatch up to DM central banks in gold holdings.However,official demandalso has not accelerated as of Q1, so it will not compensate forotherwiseslower investment demandon its own. •All of the above suggestsa neutraloutlook for gold intoH2, with Fed datadependencyimplying gold data dependency.We think structuralpositivesremaininthe form of central bank demand sustaining itshigherpost-2022 pace, and expansion of US federal debt outstanding at an 8%pace, above the CBO’s long-term expectation of 6% growth. Recalibrating precious forecasts We recognise a lower forecast profile for the precious metals around which wethink are risks are balanced.The challenge to gold (Link)wasfirstmostclearlylinkedto the energy price shock of the US-Iran war,but this relationship brokedown around mid-May(Figure2). Subsequently, gold’s link to Fed pricingwasmore persistent and gained the upper hand over lower oil prices (Figure3),embeddingin gold the risk that inflation remaining above target wouldnecessitatetighter monetary policy(Link). Although the sources of inflation are quite broad-based (Link) and there arenumerous reasons to doubt the disinflation narrative (Link), itisalso true thatmarket-based measures of inflation expectations are declining after the US-Iranmemorandum of understanding and the beginning of higher rates of Gulf oilexports. 22 June 2026Precious Special Report Policyrisk scenarios Thetwo-sided risks fromalowerQ2starting pointof precious metal pricesareframedby monetary policy, which has dominated gold’s move lower towards USD4,000/oz.The Fed Chair’s emphasis on data dependence and elimination offorward guidance means gold is also likely to be data dependent. Thehawkish riskiscontained in theJune FOMC meeting’sconfirmation ofthetightening bias.Fed Chair Warshstatedthat “we have missed [our inflationtarget] for five years, and we are going to fix that.”1Our US Econ team explainsthe hawkish risk is best illustratedby the fact thataround mid-2025, Fed policywas near standard policy rules,so thatlate 2025 Fed cuts(characterized as“insurance or risk management cuts”) moved policy below those rules, just asCore PCE began to move higher(Link).The Taylor rule prescription usingBloombergconsensus year-end forecasts for Core PCE(3.1%)andunemployment(4.4%), and the Fed’s SEP median estimates of the neutral realrate(1.1%)and NAIRU(4.2%)would imply apolicysetting 80 bps above the Fed’scurrent upper bound(4.55%).Across three standard policy rules, our US Econteam quantified thepolicyupside risk between 30-75 bps, before accounting foranychange in the neutral rate estimate (Link). On thedovishrisk,with theFed’s elimination of forwardguidance and heighteneddata dependency,the appearance ofdisinflationary datacouldwellreduce themarket’sFed pricing from the currentpeak of+44 bps for March 2027.Our houseview remains of a Fed on indefinite hold near neutral (Link), although June FOMC“crystallisedrisks for rate hikes”(Link).The US-Iran memorandum ofunderstanding, increase inshippingflows through the Strait ofHormuz,steepdrop in oil prices, inflation swaps and TIPS breakevens all point toreasons whythe Fed should be marginally less inclined to hike(Figure4).If extended, this mayform an important part of the data landscape that the FOMC consider at theJulymee