Gold continues to capture attention. As of mid‐September 2025, it’s hitting fresh, all-time highs, pushed by a convergence of economic signals, policy expectations, and broader global unease. But with the Federal Reserve’s upcoming policy meeting looming, the question on many minds is: can gold maintain its shine — or is there risk of tarnish?
Here’s a clear look at where things stand now, what’s feeding gold’s runup, and what we might expect from the Fed — and how those decisions could affect gold from here.
What Has Driven Gold to Record Levels
Several factors have come together to put gold on a strong upward trajectory:
- Softening U.S. Labor Market
Recent jobs reports have underwhelmed. Job creation is sluggish, unemployment is ticking up, and labor‐market indicators (like the JOLTS data) are showing fewer job openings. That kind of weakness tends to increase the probability that the Fed will ease policy. Investors see that and begin pricing rate cuts into forecasts. Gold benefits in such environments because lower interest rates make the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like gold lower. - Expectations of Fed Rate Cuts
The market is increasingly confident that the Fed will reduce rates — estimates for a 25 basis point (bp) cut at the upcoming meeting are strong. Some speculation even contemplates the possibility of deeper or multiple cuts later. - Weaker U.S. Dollar and Lower Real Yields
As rate expectations shift, so do yields — especially real yields (interest rates adjusted for inflation). With inflation pressures lingering, the real returns on bonds and cash can look less appealing, which tends to push money toward alternative stores of value, including gold. - Safe-Haven Demand & Global Policy Uncertainty
Political risk, debates around fiscal stability, concern over central bank independence, and other geopolitical factors are also contributing. Gold traditionally shines in moments of uncertainty — and many of those uncertainties are front-and-center now. - Central Bank Buying / Diversification
There’s evidence that central banks are continuing to accumulate gold, shifting some of their reserve composition away from traditional paper/credit assets. This adds a structural support to demand.
What to Watch in the Fed’s Next Meeting
The upcoming Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting (mid-September) is shaping up to be pivotal. Several outcomes are possible, and each has different implications for gold.
| Possible Fed Action / Signal | How It Might Affect Gold |
|---|---|
| A 25 bp rate cut with dovish guidance | Likely viewed favorably: confirms expectations, lowers rates, weakens dollar, boosts gold demand. Price may consolidate higher or move modestly up beyond current levels. |
| Larger than expected cut (e.g. 50 bp) or strong wording about future cuts | Very bullish potential. Would reinforce that the Fed sees more economic weakness ahead. Gold might get a strong rally on lowered real yields and weakened rate differentials. |
| Cut, but with hawkish undertones / concern about inflation | Mixed signals. A cut would help, but if the Fed signals reluctance to cut further (citing inflation, labor market risks, etc.), gold could pull back or consolidate volatilely. |
| No cut (unlikely, but possible depending on data surprises) | Could disappoint markets, strengthen the dollar, lift bond yields, hurt gold in the short term; possibly lead to a correction or at least retrenchment. |
Other key things to listen for:
- What the Fed says about inflation trajectory — are they comfortable with the current readings, or do they believe inflation remains a risk?
- Viewpoints on employment strength versus weakening signals. How much weight will they give recent weak labor data?
- Commentary on global risks and central bank behavior; anything that signals uncertainty tends to favor gold.
- Signals about future meetings — whether the Fed sees this meeting as the start of a cutting cycle, or a more cautious, measured approach.
Risks, Considerations & What Could Temper Gold’s Advance
While many of the inputs are supportive for gold, there are a few countervailing forces worth keeping in mind:
- Inflation Surprises: If inflation accelerates unexpectedly — especially wage inflation or sticky costs — it could push the Fed to maintain higher rates longer. That hurts gold in the short term by increasing opportunity cost.
- Strong Economic Data: If upcoming reports (jobs, productivity, consumer spending) surprise to the upside, markets may revise expectations for Fed tightening, which could weigh on gold.
- Dollar Strength: Sometimes gold rallies alongside dollar weakness, but if the dollar strengthens (for example, if global risk sentiment improves sharply, or USD becomes a flight to safety), gold could be pressured.
- Profit Taking and Technical Resistance Levels: With gold making sharp gains, there is always a chance of pullbacks: traders booking profits, tests of support levels, etc.
- Policy or Regulatory Shocks: Things like unexpected central bank moves in other major economies, shifts in mining supply, trade sanctions or geopolitical flareups that impact gold supply/demand could change the equation quickly.
What Might Gold Do Next
Putting together what we know with reasonable assumptions, here are some scenarios I believe are plausible for gold in the near to medium term:
- Base Case: Fed cuts by 25 bp, sounding dovish. Gold holds above its recent highs, perhaps pushing toward an interim resistance zone in the ~$3,650-$3,700/oz range (or whatever the precise thresholds of psychological or technical resistance are at that time). Volatility is likely — some back-and-forth as markets test the strength of support.
- Optimistic Upside: Fed not only cuts, but signals a trajectory of multiple future cuts. Economic data confirms weakening. Under this, gold could accelerate, possibly moving toward new highs beyond current ones, with $4,000/oz (or whatever number is far out) being increasingly discussed among analysts.
- Neutral/Downside Pullback: If the Fed cuts but sounds more cautious, or strong data emerges, gold may pull back or trade in a range. Support zones will be crucial; should those be broken, deeper correction possible.
Bottom Line
Gold’s recent record highs are grounded in more than just momentum — there are real, macroeconomic shifts supporting its rise: labor softness, expectations of easing monetary policy, uncertainty. The Fed meeting will likely be a defining moment: it could reinforce current gold trends, or serve as a pivot point.
For anyone watching gold — investors, savers, portfolio managers — the most important thing is watching what the Fed says, not just what it does. The tone, the data it references, and how confident it is about inflation and employment in the months ahead will likely move gold more than any single rate adjustment.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.