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Unloved and Uninteresting, Gold Heads for Worst Year Since 2015

  • Booming equity markets, crypto starved gold of attention
  • JPMorgan forecasts a bigger drop next year as economy recovers
Molten gold pours from a crucible into a mold during the casting of ingots at a foundry in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

Molten gold pours from a crucible into a mold during the casting of ingots at a foundry in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
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Gold is poised to end 2021 the same way it spent much of the year: little changed and tottering along, somewhere in the vicinity of $1,800 an ounce.

After a tumultuous start to the pandemic that drove gold to record levels in 2020, the metal famously touted as a hedge against rising prices has failed to capitalize on this year’s scorching-hot inflation. Investors appear to have lost interest, leaving gold trading in tight ranges for weeks on end, while exchange-traded fund holdings trickle down.