Gold opens above $3,600 ahead of expected rate cut this week

Gold (GC=F) futures opened at $3,680.20 per ounce on Monday, up 0.8% from Friday’s close of $3,649.40. Gold has opened above $3,600 daily since September 9.

Investors are awaiting the Fed’s next interest rate decision on September 17. A 25-basis-point cut is widely expected, though President Trump told reporters Sunday that he expected “a big cut.” The Fed will also release its dot plot this week, a chart outlining how each Fed committee member predicts interest rates will evolve over the next few years. The dot plot is an indicator of future rate changes, given the information available today. The Fed’s interest-rate decisions are designed to support maximum sustainable employment and low inflation.

The price of gold typically responds well to lower interest rates.

The opening price of gold futures on Monday is up 0.8% from Friday’s close of $3,649.40 per ounce. Monday’s opening price is up 2.4% from the opening price of $3,594.50 one week ago on September 8. In the past month, the gold futures price has increased 10% compared to the opening price of $3,346.80 on August 15, 2025. In the past year, gold is up 43.3% from the opening price of $2,568.80 on September 13, 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.

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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.