Gold opens above $3,400 as investors price in rate reductions

Gold (GC=F) futures opened at $3,417.60 per ounce on Monday, up 1.3% from Friday’s close of $3,374.40. The price of gold has not opened above $3,400 since August 8.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell implied the central bank could lower interest rates soon. He noted that upcoming job growth and inflation data would shape future rate decisions. Some of that data will be available this week, including updates on inflation, personal income, and initial jobless claims. A second quarter GDP update and the consumer sentiment reading for August are also on the calendar.

Lower interest rates and weaker economic growth tend to strengthen gold demand.

The opening price of gold futures on Monday is up 1.3% from Friday’s close of $3,374.40 per ounce. Monday’s opening price is up 2.5% from the opening price of $3,333.50 one week ago on August 18. In the past month, the gold futures price has increased 2.2% compared to the opening price of $3,344 on July 25, 2025. In the past year, gold is up 37.4% from the opening price of $2,486.50 on August 23, 2024.

24/7 gold price tracking: Don’t forget you can monitor the current price of gold on Yahoo Finance 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Want to learn more about the current top-performing companies in the gold industry? Explore a list of the top-performing companies in the gold industry using the Yahoo Finance Screener. You can create your own screeners with over 150 different screening criteria.

Investing in gold is a four-step process:

Set your goal

Set an allocation

Choose a form

Consider your investment timeline

The first step to investing in gold is understanding your goals for buying it.

Given gold’s historic behavior, three suitable investing goals for a gold position are:

Diversification into an asset that moves independently from stock prices

Protection against inflation-related loss of purchase power

Backup source of value and wealth in an unlikely economic collapse

Gold has long been part of a balanced portfolio given its ability to hold its value – or even increase further – when the value of other assets is falling. That is why investors utilize gold as a stabilizer. Investors rely on gold’s strength in tough times to limit unrealized losses in equities and inflation-related reductions in purchasing power of cash deposits. That’s exactly what we’re seeing play out now before our eyes.

Gold is also a widely recognized store of value. As such, the precious metal can potentially stand in as a medium of exchange if the dollar collapses.

“I recommend that everyone buy a little gold as a hedge against calamity,” said Scott Travers, author of The Coin Collector’s Survival Manual and editor of “COINage” magazine, in an interview with Bottom Line, Inc. Gold “should be viewed as an insurance policy,” he said.

Learn more: How to invest in gold in four steps

Whether you’re tracking the price of gold since last month or last year, the price-of-gold chart below shows the precious metal’s steady upward climb in value.

Historically, gold has shown extended up cycles and down cycles. The precious metal was in a growth phase from 2009 to 2011. It then trended down, failing to set a new high for nine years.

In those lackluster years for gold, your position will negatively impact your overall investment returns. If that feels problematic, a lower allocation percentage is more appropriate. On the other hand, you may be willing to accept gold’s underperforming years so you can benefit more in the good years. In this case, you can target a higher percentage.

The precious metal has been in the news lately, and many analysts are bullish on gold. In May, Goldman Sachs Research predicted gold would reach $3,700 a troy ounce by year-end 2025. That would equate to a 40% increase for the year, based on gold’s January 2 opening price of $2,633. Rising demand from central banks, along with uncertainty related to changing U.S. tariff policy, are the factors driving the increase.

If you are interested in learning more about gold’s historical value, Yahoo Finance has been tracking the historical price of gold since 2000.