Gold peaked in January near $5,594, repaired some of the damage in August, and still sits about 20% off that high. The question the tape keeps asking is whether that was the top. Tony Kim, Goldman Sachs’s global head of metals trading, speaking from the London floor on The Markets, gave the answer his clients have been demanding for weeks: no. “From our perspective, this isn’t the end of the bull market, it’s an elongated pause.” And later: “Ultimately the bull trend will resume and new highs are going to be in the future.”
That is a desk view, not a 43-101. Goldman’s research book still carries a $4,900 year-end case from Thomas and Struyven and a hike-stress branch nearer $4,400. Kim’s $4,000 line is the trading overlay: sovereign and institutional sponsorship at that handle, scale in if data volatility delivers it before the FOMC. This publication will not convert his verb into a ticket. Canadian miners will be marked by the print that actually trades, not by a YouTube chyron.
Two Shocks, One Pause
Kim’s pause has two parents that arrived together, which is why the price action is easy to see and hard to split.
First, Kevin Warsh’s nomination and confirmation as Fed chair. The market is still mapping a reaction function inside an administration that has not been shy about how it wants the Fed to behave. Bessent telling yen shorts this week that he is “the house” and that he has “asymmetric information” on Japanese policymakers is the same family of official fingerprints. Kim’s tell: “I think any time you see official policy intervention, people tend to buy gold.” That sentence can be true and still lose a Friday to 162,000 jobs.
Second, the U.S.–Iran conflict and the Hormuz disruption. Oil, energy, agriculture and metals all picked up inflation and policy risk. The specific leak into bullion, in Kim’s account, is that the disruption “disturbed” the recycling of reserve flows that used to find the metal. Gulf-generated reserve recycling is not showing up the same way. India has been defending the rupee; gold accumulation there is “not top of mind,” and New Delhi has tried to throttle domestic demand to protect the currency. China retail, India physical and official buying were all strong into year-end. Hormuz changed the math on the first two. Official buying did not disappear.
A large amount of positioning across the Goldman franchise was slashed. That is the speculative washout. The flow that remains is the one Kim says actually matters.
The Funnel Got Narrower
“We mine about 3,500 metric tons of gold a year. Prior to Russia-Ukraine, central banks used to purchase around 400 to 500 tons a year. They’re now purchasing something closer to 1,000, 1,100 tons a year.” What remains for jewellery, ETFs, bars and physical investment is a smaller funnel. “You don’t need as much investment capital to drive prices materially higher.”
That is the structural claim. It matches the official scoreboard well enough to use: Q2 official demand of 289 tonnes, UBS’s 2026 official range of 750–1,000 tonnes, the PBOC’s August 650,000 ounces — 20.2 tonnes, a 22nd consecutive month, holdings near 2,387 tonnes. A World Gold Council survey cited in the same week’s UBS note had nearly 90% of responding reserve managers expecting global official reserves to rise, and 45% expecting their own to rise.
The debasement argument, Kim said, is the same one gold bulls have run for years, “just with fiscal sustainability doing more of the work.” A “cheapening of fiat currency versus gold” has been the multi-year trend. If fiscal fear becomes the allocator — “not just in the West, but in Japan” — the usual inverse with yields can snap. Higher back-end yields on fiscal concern could coincide with allocations into gold. That is the correlation break. It is also Marc Faber’s 6–7% 10-year warning in a different accent. Day to day, Kim still has gold trading with real rates. On a multi-year basis, 2022 — Russia-Ukraine and the freeze of Russian reserves — is the regime change. EM official buying narrowed the funnel and made the official sector hungrier.
Asia Is the Weak Side of the Pause
Physical Asia is why Kim will not call the pause a cycle top and will not call the next week a new high. You need a longer normalization of energy markets and Hormuz, in his view, before that bid returns at prior scale. Until then, Western funds and the official book carry more of the tape than the Shanghai premium.
Silver gets the usual warning label. Half the demand is industrial. The other half — investment — is what “actually clears the tape,” at $50, $80 or $100, depending on whether India, China retail and Western ETFs show up together. When they did in January, “you saw what a squeeze looks like.” Then 20–30% air pockets, spot-up-vol-up, an unstable complex. Central banks, “to my knowledge, aren’t actively accumulating silver,” Kim said, so silver is a bet on the retail reaction function. “The fundamental trade still remains gold. That’s where the institutions are deployed.”
Canadian silver names that treated January as a new permanent regime already sat the exam. Gold mining companies that treat Kim’s pause as a financing window should remember diesel at last week’s $5.85 and a 20% metal drawdown that already happened.
The Trade He Would Take — and the One This Desk Will Not Write
Chris Hussey asked what the trade is. Kim: “Look, we’re still bullish gold.” The level: “$4,000 is a pretty solid floor. We see sovereign buying at those levels. We see institutional sponsorship at those levels. And so I think if you get a chance to scale in between now and the FOMC with some of the volatility around the data, closer to $4,000, you want to scale into a long position there.”
Spot after payrolls tagged about $4,365 and sits nearer $4,430. CPI is the near-term catalyst into the September meeting. Kim is watching the reaction function as much as the print: does the tape immediately price a September hike and a flatter path, or does it admit it still does not know how Warsh — and the White House — will respond?
The bottom line in the ZeroHedge wrap is the same one UBS used in different clothes: speculative books washed out, official sector still absorbing on the order of a third of annual mine supply, fiat cheapening, policy hands on the yen and the long end. $4,000 is where Goldman says the sovereigns and institutions show up. $4,430 is where the market is. Scaling at the second because someone likes the first is a translation error.
Gold mining stocks add torque to a resumed bull and to a second flush. They are not the official bid. A Canadian producer’s year is AISC versus $4,365, not versus a London interview. Juniors that need new highs to finance winter are not the pause trade. They are the squeeze trade, and Kim just described what happens when the retail function leaves.
Conclusion
Goldman’s metals desk does not think January was the end. It thinks two shocks — a new chair and a strait — paused a market whose funnel is narrower because official buying doubled. New highs are “in the future,” not on the CPI release. Silver is the higher-beta cousin that needs retail. Gold is where the institutions sit.
A Canadian reader can take the funnel arithmetic and the Asia warning. They should leave “scale into a long” on the trading floor that said it. Watch the print. Watch whether Hormuz lets physical Asia back in. Watch whether fiscal yields break the old inverse. And do not confuse a 20% drawdown with a new bear market — or with a coupon.
Important information
This article is analysis for Canadian Mining Report readers based on public comments by Goldman Sachs’s Tony Kim as reported in contemporaneous coverage dated September 9, 2026, and on official-demand figures reported elsewhere. It is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold gold or mining securities. Desk comments are not research price targets. Forward-looking statements are uncertain. Consult a licensed adviser. The author and publisher accept no liability for actions taken on the basis of this article. Past performance is not indicative of future results.