GOLD fell 3% on Thursday, its third straight daily loss, to the lowest level since October 2025 as rising oil prices on fading hopes of Middle East peace stoked fears of higher inflation and elevated interest rates, said Reuters.
Spot gold was down 3% at $3,867.96 an ounce by the close of trade in Johanensburg. US gold futures for December delivery lost 3.2% to $3,872.00.
The newswire cited US President Donald Trump as saying on social media that the US did not need a deal with Iran, dashing hopes of an end to the conflict that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February and has spread across the region.
Oil futures rose more than 1%, adding to expectations that the Federal Reserve could keep rates higher for longer. Jim Wyckoff, a market analyst at American Gold Exchange, said higher crude was negative for gold from an inflation perspective. A hot US consumer price reading on Tuesday, hawkish Fed comments this week and a dollar index near a 19-month high were also weighing on the metal, he said.
Markets are pricing in a 91% chance of a 25-basis-point hike in December, with the odds of a 50-basis-point move also rising. Investors now await US producer price data on Friday, said Reuters.
Erik Norland, chief economist at derivatives exchange CME Group, was quoted in the Financial Times last month as saying that the largest contributing factor to the decline in precious metals prices this year was the shift in expectations from rate cuts to rate increases. Yet it was “astonishing” that prices were still significantly higher than at the beginning of 2025.
Budget deficits rattling confidence in bond markets, rising inflation, geopolitics and buying by central banks were behind the support for gold, he said.
Central bank gold buying in September rose to the highest monthly level since November 2024, said the newspaper citing provisional data from the World Gold Council.
Shares in AngloGold Ashanti and Pan African Resources both lost nearly 4% at the close of trade on the JSE. Harmony Gold and Gold Fields were 2.9% and 2.6% weaker respectively.
Spot silver fell 3.33% to $49.97 an ounce, spot platinum lost 1.2% to $1,519.05 and spot palladium dropped 3.0% to $997.19.