Gold: Bull market conviction broadens – Societe Generale

Societe Generale analysts Michael Haigh and Jeremy Sellem describe a broad-based Gold bull market in 2026, driven by ETFs, futures and options positioning. They highlight strong physical ETF inflows, near-record futures exposure by money managers and a structurally bullish options skew. The report stresses that multiple independent demand channels are reinforcing each other, supporting a constructive stance on Gold over the medium term.

Bullish signals across all channels

"Gold has entered a new phase of its 2026 bull run, one defined less by speculative momentum and more by broad-based, structural conviction across every category of market participant. What began as a geopolitical shock, evolved over the following months into something far more durable: a synchronised build-up of physical, futures, and options exposure that now spans retail investors, professional money managers, and derivatives traders alike."

"In August, gold ETFs registered a substantial 201 tonnes of net inflows, marking the third-largest monthly addition on record in tonnage terms after now famous world events: February 2009 and the stimulus package announced by the newly inaugurated Obama administration, and March 2020 with the start of the lockdown for Covid globally. This month's inflow surpassed the strong inflows recorded in March 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in September 2012 after the Federal Reserve's announcement of QE3."

"In notional exposure terms (contracts x price x contract size), money managers' net positioning reached the second-largest long exposure on record, behind only January 2026, when gold broke through $5,400/oz to an all-time high. This time, with prices roughly $1,000/oz lower, the scale of the dollar exposure is even more striking: it is no longer simply a price story."

"Overall, investors appear to be pricing near-term uncertainty via puts while steadily building call exposure further out the curve, consistent with a constructive medium-term outlook for gold."

(This article was created with the help of an Artificial Intelligence tool and reviewed by an editor. Know more.)