Gold falls as investors await Fed September meeting minutes Quartz · One kilogram gold bars and a five hundred gram gold bar in April 2025 (Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Cris Tolomia Wed, October 7, 2026 at 7:51 AM EDT 2 min read GC=F -1.90% DX-Y.NYB +0.61% CL=F +0.42% U11.SI -2.93% Gold fell in Asian and European trading Wednesday as investors braced for the release of the Federal Reserve's September meeting minutes, which are due later in the day in the U.S.
Spot gold declined 1.1% to $4,118.09 a troy ounce. Gold futures were down 0.6% at $4,159.90 a troy ounce in early European trading. A stronger U.S. dollar index, up 0.3% to 102.19, raised the cost of dollar-priced commodities for international purchasers.
Saxo Bank analysts told The Wall Street Journal that the push to $4,180 on Tuesday ran into selling pressure as crude prices recovered and yields on longer-dated bonds stayed close to levels not seen in years. UOB's Global Economics & Markets Research team observed that gold and other assets offering no yield tend to come under pressure when interest rates are elevated.
The FedWatch tool shows market participants assign below a 22% probability to an additional rate increase this month.
Wednesday's minutes will capture the deliberations that led the Fed to raise the federal-funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point in September. The release may also reveal the specific indicators guiding officials' judgment on whether additional tightening is needed, including discussion of a real federal-funds rate that some policymakers view as surprisingly accommodative.
The September decision came after a stretch of internal disagreement at the Fed. At the July 28-29 meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-3 to hold rates steady in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, with Cleveland Fed President Beth M. Hammack, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, and Dallas Fed President Lorie K. Logan each dissenting in favor of a quarter-point increase. The July meeting marked the fifth consecutive gathering at which the FOMC left rates unchanged, following three cuts in late 2025.
The July meeting minutes showed hawkish sentiment extended beyond the three dissenters. Some officials said current financial conditions might not be tight enough to bring inflation back to 2%, and a few who voted to hold argued that an immediate increase could head off the need for steeper tightening later. Officials cited tariff pass-through, energy costs tied to the Middle East conflict, and demand from the AI buildout as factors sustaining price pressures.
Despite Wednesday's drop, Phillip Nova analyst Priyanka Sachdeva argued that the underlying forces supporting gold have not faded, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sachdeva said persistent geopolitical tensions and uncertain oil supply from the Middle East are keeping gold on investors' radar, and she identified $4,000 an ounce as a threshold where buyers with high confidence in gold's long-run outlook may step in.
