JPMorgan sees gold trading between $4,500 and $5,000 as Jackson Hole looms

Gold is doing that thing again where it makes forecasters look silly. JPMorgan slashed its near-term gold price target in early July, only to watch spot prices blow past the revised number six weeks later.

A forecast that aged quickly

On July 3, JPMorgan Global Research cut its Q4 2026 gold target to $4,500 per ounce, down sharply from a prior call of $6,000. The Q3 forecast was trimmed to $4,300 per ounce. The reasoning was straightforward: softer demand from critical buying sectors and the risk that the Federal Reserve might hike rates earlier than expected if inflation stays elevated.

For most of July and into mid-August, gold cooperated with the bearish revision, bouncing between $4,170 and $4,400 per ounce. Then it didn’t.

By August 19, spot gold hit $4,525 per ounce, leapfrogging JPMorgan’s downgraded Q4 target with more than four months left in the year. The move was driven partly by US Treasury actions and shifting expectations around the Fed’s rate path.

To put the whiplash in context, gold touched an all-time high above $5,300 per ounce back in February 2026 before a meaningful correction dragged prices lower for months.

The bull case is still on JPMorgan’s books

The July downgrade grabbed attention, but JPMorgan’s broader research tells a different story. In a note published August 13, the bank’s full-year 2026 average gold price forecast sits at $5,243 per ounce. The Q4 target in that same report? Still $6,000 per ounce, the same number the July note walked away from.

That’s two research notes from the same bank, published roughly five weeks apart, with Q4 targets that differ by $1,500 per ounce.

Looking further out, JPMorgan projects a 2027 average gold price of $6,263 per ounce.

Jackson Hole as the next inflection point

The annual Jackson Hole symposium has a long history of market-moving moments. In 2022, Fed Chair Jerome Powell used the gathering to deliver a blunt hawkish message that sent risk assets tumbling.

Gold has historically benefited from moderate inflation, which erodes the purchasing power of cash and makes hard assets more attractive. But runaway inflation that forces aggressive central bank tightening is a different animal entirely. Higher real interest rates raise the opportunity cost of holding gold, which yields nothing on its own.

Central bank demand, which fueled much of gold’s rally over the past several years, has shown signs of cooling in recent months. That softening was one of the factors behind JPMorgan’s July downgrade. Investor demand through exchange-traded products and futures markets has picked up slack, particularly as the Treasury’s recent actions revived interest in gold as a macro hedge.

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