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By Barbara Kollmeyer

Goldman Sachs also is bullish on gold

Investor appetite for gold has the potential to double prices of the metal, says JPMorgan.

For those weary of the AI debate, gold’s dramatic swoon this week has at least changed the discussion.

Since its biggest one-day drop in over a decade on Tuesday, the debate has surrounded whether gold will regroup and push higher. Goldman Sachs, for one, is sticking to its end-2026 target of $4,900 per ounce, and sees upside risks from central bank as well as institutional investor demand.

“The speed of recent ETF inflows and client feedback suggest many long-term capital allocators – including sovereign-wealth funds, central banks, pension funds, and both private wealth and asset managers – are planning to increase their exposure to gold as a strategic portfolio diversifier,” said analysts Lina Thomas and Daan Struyven, said in a note.

That segues into our call of the day from a JPMorgan team of strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, who say the price of gold could more than double in three years, as investors increasingly use it to hedge equities.

Firstly, Panigirtzoglou and his colleagues blame the metal’s recent tumble on trend-following commodity trading advisers taking profit on gold futures contracts, rather than retail investors exiting gold ETF exposures. Gold futures (GC00) have soared 56% this year.

“If this assessment is correct and retail investors were not behind [Tuesday’s] gold correction, then it is likely that their buying of gold ETFs has been less motivated by momentum and more driven by other factors,” they said.

The strategists do not believe all of that buying can be explained by this year’s popular debasement trade, which has seen investors turn to gold due to worries of a weakening dollar.

“What the ‘debasement trade’ does not traditionally encompass is the motivation to hedge equity exposures. And this motivation to hedge equity exposures has been more visible this year as retail investors bought equities and gold simultaneously and shunned longer-dated bonds, i.e. their traditional asset to hedge equity risk,” said Panigirtzoglou and his team.

While retail investors flocked to those bonds in 2023 and most of 2024, likely as a hedge against rising stock prices, they haven’t done the same this year, even though equities continue to climb, said the strategists. Instead, as their chart shows, gold has been the draw:

The strategists calculate that nonbank investors globally have boosted their allocation to gold to 2.6% of holdings. They arrive at this number by dividing $6.6 trillion of private investor gold holdings excluding central banks by the total stock of equities, bonds, cash and gold held outside banks. Should their theory that investors have replaced gold with bonds to hedge equity exposures prove correct, then that 2.6% allocation is probably too low, they say.

Another factor driving investors toward gold and away from those longer-dated bonds concerns the investor experience post Liberation Day, when President Donald Trump announced tariff rates he quickly scaled back. As stocks sharply corrected, longer-dated bonds also suffered, which became a problem for strategies that use those bonds as a way to hedge equity risk, said the JPMorgan team.

They calculate, using ETFs as a proxy, that around a tenth of the 20% allocation to bonds is in longer-dated bond funds. If that 2% allocation to those bonds were to be replaced by gold, the overall allocation would rise to 4.6%, implying a near doubling of gold prices factoring in other financial assets.

To be more exact, Panigirtzoglou and his team assume equity prices grow enough in the next three years that equity allocations rise to 54.6%, the previous peak of the dot-com bubble era. They also factor in a projected $7 trillion per year expansion of bonds and cash in the next three years. With both in mind, “the gold price would have to rise by 110% for the gold allocation to increase from 2.6% currently to 4.6% by 2028,” said the JPMorgan team.

Read: Here’s a theory about why gold suffered its biggest one-day fall in more than 10 years, and it’s linked to the U.S. economy

The markets

U.S. stock futures (ES00) (YM00) (NQ00) are mostly flat after Wednesday’s selloff. Oil (CL00) has climbed above $60/barrel after U.S. sanctions on two major Russian oil exporters. Gold (GC00) and silver (SI00) are rising.

   Key asset performance                                                Last       5d      1m      YTD      1y 
   S&P 500                                                              6699.4     0.42%   0.93%   13.90%   15.56% 
   Nasdaq Composite                                                     22,740.40  0.31%   1.08%   17.76%   24.42% 
   10-year Treasury                                                     3.965      -0.80   -20.30  -61.10   -25.20 
   Gold                                                                 4107.4     -5.45%  8.65%   55.62%   49.43% 
   Oil                                                                  60.66      6.51%   -6.99%  -15.60%  -13.75% 
   Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points 

The buzz

Tesla shares (TSLA) are falling after revenue beat, but earnings disappointed. CEO Elon Musk closed out the call asking investors to vote in favor of his $1 trillion compensation package.

IBM shares (IBM) declined on concerns over growth in its software business.

Results from Intel (INTC) and Ford (F) results are due after the close.

Quantum stocks soared after the Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration is considering making investments in the space.

Molina Healthcare (MOH) cut full-year guidance after the healthcare provider’s underperformance in its marketplace hit sales.

Existing-home sales for September are due at 10 a.m. Fed governor Michael Barr will make another appearance, at 10:25 a.m.

Best of the web

Popular leveraged funds shock investors with huge losses.

Goldman trader answers why the so-called dumb money has been beating the pros this year.

Why these money managers see stocks climbing through 2026.

The chart

Yardeni Research offers a chart showing a bubble for Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF ARKK during 2020, that burst the next two years “without causing any collateral damage,” and since April has been doing fine. It’s part of a bone Yardeni has to pick with talk over an “everything bubble” that will soon pop. Rising margin debt this summer, SPACs in 2021, bitcoin in 2022 were all bubbly but no global collapse ensued, the firm says.

Top tickers

These were the top-searched tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m.:

   Ticker  Security name 
   BYND    Beyond Meat 
   TSLA    Tesla 
   NVDA    Nvidia 
   GME     GameStop 
   QBTS    D-Wave Quantum 
   TSM     Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing 
   RGTI    Rigetti Computing 
   AMD     Advanced Micro Devices 
   IONQ    IonQ 
   NFLX    Netflix 

Random reads

Wild bear breaks into California zoo, checks on pals.

That Louvre jewelry heist? Security camera were pointed the other way.

In Spain, a far lower-stakes theft, of restaurant chairs.

-Barbara Kollmeyer

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires

  10-23-25 0651ET
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Background

Philips sued Belkin GmbH, Belkin International Inc., and Belkin Limited, (Belkin) two directors and one managing director (the directors) in the UPC’s Munich Local Division (LD Munich) for infringement of EP 2 867 997. The patent addresses two-way communication and negotiation phases in inductive power transfer systems for charging portable electronic devices, including the role of an “acknowledgement” signal. The patent has been declared essential to the Qi wireless charging standard. In the UPC infringement action, Philips sought cross-border relief including injunctions, damages, disclosure, and product recall. Belkin counterclaimed for revocation.

Previously, the Düsseldorf Regional Court had ruled that Belkin GmbH and Belkin Limited did not infringe in Germany, and the German Federal Patent Court had rejected a nullity action.

LD Munich found that Belkin had infringed and the directors were liable, not as infringers but as intermediaries under Art 63(1) UPCA. The LD Munich issued a permanent injunction against Belkin in Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Finland, and Austria to refrain and desist, provide information, and pay damages. The directors were also ordered to refrain from exercising their management duties insofar as they led to infringing acts by Belkin outside of Germany. However, the LD Munich refused an order for a product recall. Both sides appealed.

Decision of the Court of Appeal

Validity

The CoA confirmed the patent’s validity. In doing so, it adopted a detailed claim construction that treated the “acknowledgement” element as a transmitted, indicative message that signals acceptance or rejection of entering a negotiation phase, without requiring the transmitter to be capable of rejection in practice.

Infringement

The court found that Belkin’s Qi compliant chargers fell within the scope of the EP’s claims, including the acknowledgement behavior prescribed by the current Qi standard.

“Offering” under Article 25(a) European Patent Convention (EPC) is an autonomous concept interpreted in the economic and not the legal sense. There is no need for a legally contractual binding offer. Offering includes the marketing of a product on a website, even without a price. Belkin’s web pages constituted offerings in Italy, France, and the Netherlands, even where the purchase took place via third-party retail links (e.g., Amazon).

Managing director liability

The CoA overturned the LD Munich decision against the directors and dismissed the claims against them. According to Articles 63(1) and 25 EPC, an infringer could be someone to whom the infringing acts could be attributable. However, merely holding the position of managing director and controlling the risks of a company does not necessarily make a person an instigator, accomplice, or accessory to the company’s infringement.

A managing director is liable only if his or her actions go beyond the ordinary professional duties of a managing director, e.g., if the director deliberately uses the company to infringe or the director knows the company is infringing and fails to stop it. Reliance on legal advice will generally suffice to negate the requisite knowledge until a first instance infringement decision has been issued.

On the facts of this case, the directors were not personally liable.

Relief

The CoA confirmed that corrective measures such as product recall, removal from distribution channels, and destruction, can be ordered in relation to infringing products under Article 63 EPC. This type of relief is the norm, and it is up to the infringer to demonstrate that such measures are disproportionate or will convert the infringing products into non-infringing products. Belkin had not done this.

The injunction did not bind Belkin GmbH and Belkin Ltd in Germany because of the previous Dusseldorf non-infringement judgment already in place. However, this did not bar UPC relief for other territories or other Belkin entities who were not party to the German proceedings. The German decision was not the same in law and fact because it concerned a different national designation of the same patent.

Key takeaways and implications

• This decision strengthens the UPC’s business-practical approach to infringement. Online marketing can constitute an “offering” across multiple member states, even without a stated price or legally binding contractual offer, or with a link to a third-party supplier.
• The CoA took a narrower approach to director liability than the LD Munich. Officers are not automatically liable for corporate infringement but may be exposed where they intentionally facilitate violations or knowingly fail to intervene.
• Product recall, removal from distribution and destruction are default remedies in infringement actions. Defendants must be prepared to prove disproportionality if they wish to avoid such relief.
• The UPC was willing to come to a different conclusion to the German courts in relation to the same patent. A national ruling limits relief within that jurisdiction in respect of the parties to the legally binding judgment. However, this does not bar UPC relief against other entities in other UPC territories.