Jeff Currie sees gold price pullback before $10,000 run

Gold may face a short-term correction as geopolitical tensions and slowing momentum in central bank buying weigh on investor sentiment, but in the longer-term, the metal’s bull case remains firmly intact, according to veteran commodities strategist Jeffrey Currie.

In a post on X Friday, the former head of commodity research at Goldman Sachs revealed that he has been “short gold” since March, pointing to the structural fallout of the Iran war that could force some states like Turkey to keep selling gold to cover higher energy prices.

“When the marginal central bank flips from structural buyer to forced seller to pay for energy, gold’s biggest bid disappears,” Currie, now executive co-chairman of Abaxx Markets and a senior advisor at The Carlyle Group, wrote.

Currie’s long-term view on gold nevertheless remains bullish. “Once central banks turn dovish after the energy crisis hits growth, the trade resets and I’m back long,” he wrote.

As for gold’s price trajectory, the commodities veteran projects that gold could first drop back down towards $4,000 per oz., erasing its gains for 2026, and then surge towards $10,000 per ounce.

The prediction comes as gold continues to face significant selling pressure amid rising concerns of inflation caused by the war in the Middle East. By Tuesday midday, the yellow metal had dropped back to the $4,500 level, trimming its year-to-date gains down to 5%.

‘Most asymmetric trade in history’

Currie’s gold outlook is part of a longer thread on his X feed explaining why commodities could be part of what he calls “the most asymmetric trade in modern financial history”.

According to Currie, investors have been chasing the artificial intelligence trade but have largely ignored the physical assets needed the technology runs on. In fact, “these assets have quietly become the best-performing asset class of the decade,” he wrote.

In the X thread, he argued that a commodity super cycle is essentially a capex cycle. “The Magnificent 7 plus Oracle will spend roughly $820 billion on capital expenditure in 2026 — approaching Germany’s entire annual capital formation, and larger than the UK and France individually,” he noted. “That capex is the largest physical commodity bid ever assembled inside eight income statements.”

Capex leads to price overshoot

The former Goldman analyst compares the price spike in commodities such as metals and oil to a symptom, with capex starvation analogous to an illness. “Refinery investment is at a 10-year low. Upstream oil and gas investment is down 35% from its 2015 peak. The top 20 miners are spending 40% less than at the 2012 cycle high,” he wrote.

“Metals and oil were already rallying before the Strait of Hormuz closed. The capex starvation set the stage, and the geopolitical shock simply accelerated the timeline. You can relieve the symptoms with a recession or higher rates. But you cannot cure the disease without years of physical investment.”

At this point, as Currie posits, the market is at the transition point — one that historically happened during big geopolitical events like Vietnam, 9/11 and Iraq II, The Strait of Hormuz. However, he believes that this one could lead to a much larger cycle. “The Mag 7 — the largest energy and commodity short in history — is building the very capex that supplies its own demand.”

“The price will overshoot first. The capex will follow. Then the new supply. Then the next exploitation phase. But this takes more than a decade. So own it now,” Currie wrote.