Deutsche Bank reiterated its bullish stance on gold and maintained a long-term price target of $6,000 per ounce following last week’s sharp correction in precious metals.
The bank did not assign a formal recommendation but restated its positive outlook and confirmed that neither its target nor its underlying assumptions had changed.
Deutsche argued that the scale of the late January price fall far exceeded the significance of the apparent triggers and did not signal a durable shift in the gold market regime.
The report noted that a single-day decline of the magnitude seen on 30 January had occurred only twice since 1975, in January 1980 and February 1983, under very different macroeconomic conditions.
Analysts acknowledged clear signs of elevated speculative activity but concluded that positioning alone could not fully explain the price action.
China featured prominently in the analysis, with Deutsche highlighting rapid growth in Chinese gold exchange-traded fund holdings during January.
January inflows of 0.94 million troy ounces compared with total additions of 3.24 million troy ounces during the whole of 2025, itself a record year.
If annualised, the January pace would exceed 11 million troy ounces, approaching the scale of demand from developed-market exchange-traded funds.
The bank also pointed to extreme premiums over net asset value in Chinese silver funds as evidence of constrained investor access rather than waning demand.
In several cases, fund prices fell sharply even as underlying silver prices rose, before speculative interest quickly re-emerged.
Activity on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange was cited as further confirmation of strong Chinese retail and institutional appetite for precious metals exposure.
Platinum and palladium futures briefly traded at premiums of several hundred dollars per ounce to New York benchmarks, with volumes at times exceeding those seen on established Western exchanges.
By contrast, US futures positioning told a more cautious story.
Data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed that net long positions in gold fell to a three-month low and silver positioning dropped to a two-year low, indicating that US-based speculative investors were reducing exposure rather than adding to it.
Deutsche reviewed several potential catalysts for the late January sell-off, including a modest decline in US equities, a one percent rise in the dollar index, and news around the appointment of a new Federal Reserve chair.
The bank concluded that none of these factors justified the scale of the move, arguing instead that stretched positioning and risk management considerations amplified the reaction.
Importantly for long-term investors, Deutsche argued that the thematic drivers underpinning gold demand remained intact.
The report contrasted current conditions with the early 1980s, when gold weakness followed decisive disinflation and a sharply strengthening US dollar.
It also distinguished the present environment from 2013, when the taper tantrum represented a sudden and unexpected tightening of monetary policy from an exceptionally accommodative starting point.
Today, inflation concerns were described as forward-looking rather than a response to runaway price growth, while the US dollar was judged to be overvalued rather than poised for sustained appreciation.
The bank argued that institutional investors continued to signal a gradual multi-year diversification away from dollar-denominated assets, a trend it did not believe had reversed.
Official sector demand was also seen as supportive, with recent announcements from Poland and Korea reinforcing the view that central banks remained structurally inclined to add gold.
Deutsche noted that surveys from the World Gold Council and OMFIF showed record-high intentions among reserve managers to increase gold holdings over the next 12 months.
The report concluded that recent price weakness had already begun to attract renewed buying interest in China, as evidenced by rising Shanghai Gold Exchange premiums and resilient demand for upside options.
Taken together, Deutsche Bank argued that the correction did not undermine the strategic case for gold and left its $6,000 per ounce target unchanged.