According to Afdhal Rahman, OCBC’s executive director of wealth advisory, the oil and energy crisis triggered by the West Asia conflict has implications for the price of gold. “Gold enjoyed a powerful rally earlier this year, only for momentum to stall and fade amid the Iran war,” he says. “It seemed counter-intuitive at the time, that a war would lead to a retracement in the price of the yellow metal.”
The way Afdhal sees it, macro factors are behind gold’s recent weakness and gold has not lost its safe-haven role. The macro drivers include inflation, interest rates and the US dollar. “Oil, inflation and interest rates are currently intertwined in a hawkish dance [and] persistently elevated oil prices have stoked higher inflation expectations, leading markets to price in a more restrictive path for policy rates,” explains Afdhal.
With markets increasingly believing that the US Federal Reserve is less likely to cut interest rates in 2026, bond yields have risen significantly in the US and other developed markets including Europe and Japan. “Higher real interest rates tend to dim the sheen of gold as the yellow metal neither generates income nor pays dividends,” says Afdhal, adding that other yield-bearing assets such as cash and fixed income become more attractive than gold when real yields rise as reflected in the current situation.
As for the US dollar’s impact on gold, a stronger greenback typically makes gold more expensive for investors who use other currencies, as gold is priced in US dollars. This makes gold less attractive globally, weakening demand and prices, says Afdhal.
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Similarly, Carsten Menke, head of next generation research at Julius Baer believes a weaker US dollar is positive for gold. In a May 20 research alert, he expects US interest rate cuts to return and the US dollar to weaken sometime in the future.
While gold prices are moving more in sync with the US dollar and US bond yields since the start of the Iran war, Menke sees this less as a return to the pre-2022 yield-driven regime, with the focus returning to those factors that have been driving the post-2022 record run. “Central-bank buying remains the strongest structural force in the gold market and Western-world investment demand should pick up again once clarity and conviction about US monetary policy returns.”
In the immediate term, Menke sees elevated volatility as long as the war lasts, with the gold market struggling to properly price potential tailwinds from the war versus headwinds from a stronger US dollar, higher US bond yields and prevailing concerns about less expansionary monetary policy.
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John Reade, senior market strategist for Europe and Asia at the World Gold Council (WGC), also believes gold is not in crisis despite its price volatility, based on WGC’s data. “We’ve seen ETF inflows in April, and investors aren’t showing any signs of panic,” Reade says in a May 13 podcast. “They certainly did show signs of profit taking back in March.”
In the 1Q2026 Gold Demand Trends report, physical gold bullion saw strong growth of 42% y-o-y and 11% q-o-q to 473.6 tonnes. Meanwhile, ETF demand dropped 73% y-o-y and 65% q-o-q to 62 tonnes. However, a May 7 report noted that April saw a rebound in demand, with ETF gold holdings rising 45 tonnes to 4,137 tonnes.
“Historically, we often see periods of profit-taking with a sudden shock that comes to the market,” Reade says in a May 13 podcast. “We saw it during the global financial crisis, we saw it during the early stages of Covid, but then gold often bounces back first and is supported by safe haven buying.”
Afdhal, like Menke and Reade, is sanguine about gold’s prospects and believes that the strategic case for gold remains intact over the medium to longer term. “Ironically, while the Iran war has been a source of near-term weakness, it has reinforced the long-term case for gold, as institutional investors are likely to seek non-sovereign stores of value to mitigate the risks of heightened rate volatility, reduce reliance on the US dollar and guard against the prospect of a more openly weaponised dollar system,” says Afdhal.
“While it [gold] appears to be under pressure, it is far from being out of favour — particularly in view of the current geopolitical backdrop, ongoing central bank demand and its enduring role as a portfolio hedge.”
