Gold prices could top $2,000 this year, analysts predict

CNBC reports that gold prices could surge beyond the $2,000 level this year as economic and geopolitical uncertainties lead to a rush for safer assets, analysts predicted.

On Monday, spot gold jumped to record levels, to $1,943.92 per ounce. This level eclipsed the previous record high price set in September 2011.

“We think the current momentum in the next few months will cross the $2,000 an ounce mark. The key question is how much does the rally increase after that,” Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Vivek Dhar, mining and energy commodities analyst, told CNBC.

He added that in order to see prices well above that level — like $2,500 per ounce, the U.S. would have to move interest rates to below zero.

There is an inverse relationship between gold prices and real yields. Real yield is an investment return that has been adjusted for inflation.

When real yields go down, gold prices will go up, and vice versa. In such a scenario, the opportunity cost of holding gold, a non-yielding asset, is lower as investors are not foregoing interest that would be otherwise earned in yielding assets.

The Fed has kept the benchmark rate at close to zero this year, and talk has centered around whether it should go to negative like its counterparts in Europe and Japan.