Related targets: gold, silver, US dollar index, 10-year US Treasury yield, Korea KOSPI index, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron Technology, Nvidia

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Core Speed Reading

1. The first FOMC meeting of the newly appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Warsh landed, maintaining the benchmark interest rate at 3.50% -3.75% unchanged. The hawkish wording of the meeting exceeded expectations, strengthening the stickiness of inflation and the risk of energy supply shocks. The market completely postponed the expectation of interest rate cuts, and the long-term pricing of high interest rates took shape;

2. The market has experienced a historic abnormal trend: AI semiconductor risk assets and gold silver safe haven assets have fallen sharply simultaneously, breaking the traditional "stock falling, gold rising" safe haven paradigm. The core reason is not the failure of safe haven attributes, but the rise in real interest rates and the strengthening of the US dollar, becoming the top pricing factor in the entire market;

3. Gold has successively fallen below the two major thresholds of $4100 and $4000, leading to crowded long positions and concentrated deleveraging. Short term liquidity priority has completely overwhelmed long-term benefits such as central bank gold purchases and geopolitical hedging;

4. The circuit breaker in the South Korean stock market is just a macro magnifying glass: popular assets around the world in 2025 are collectively under pressure during the period of rising capital costs. The AI track looks at order fulfillment, and precious metals look at interest rate inflection points. The trends of the two types of assets are completely differentiated.

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1、 Abnormal market trend unfolds: AI stocks and gold and silver plunge synchronously, causing a major change in the underlying logic of the market

Entering June, the global capital market has emerged from a highly signaling divergence, completely overturning the public's inherent trading cognition. The South Korean KOSPI index was dragged down by AI storage chip heavyweight stocks, with a monthly decline of over 8%, triggering a circuit breaker within the market; At the same time, the two traditional safe haven precious metals of gold and silver experienced a deep correction, with gold breaking through the key support level of $4000 integer during trading.

In the past macroeconomic cycle, when market risk panic was brewing, the conventional operation of funds was to sell equity risk assets and increase holdings of gold for hedging, naturally forming a negative correlation trend between stocks and gold. But this round of market trend is completely opposite: funds are not classified by category, and AI semiconductor growth stocks and gold and silver safe haven assets are sold simultaneously.

The core of this round of market trading has never been 'asset safety', but 'a significant increase in the cost of holding assets'. What determines the rise and fall of assets is no longer the safe haven attribute or track fundamentals, but the real interest rate - the real price of funds after deducting inflation expectations.

Real interest rates have risen, and the interest value of cash and short-term US Treasury bonds has increased; The holding cost of interest free gold and silver has skyrocketed, and the discounted value of forward cash flows for overvalued AI technology stocks has shrunk. The simultaneous valuation of both types of assets has been revised downwards. This round of market trend is sufficient evidence: after the new leadership of the Federal Reserve, the US dollar and interest rates have returned to the top pricing position of global assets.

2、 Source of gold price breakthrough: Fed hawkish shift, rewriting full year macro expectations

1. The resolution on interest rates may seem to maintain stability, but in reality, it has completely turned the tables

On May 22nd, Kevin Warsh was officially sworn in as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. On June 17th, he welcomed his first FOMC interest rate meeting. The Federal Reserve maintained the benchmark interest rate in the range of 3.50% -3.75% for the fourth consecutive time, and the decision was in line with market expectations.

But the post meeting statement completely rewrote market expectations: the Federal Reserve has made it clear that current core inflation remains above the 2% policy target, and the impact of energy commodity supply may continue to boost price rebounds; The official has removed the loose forward guidance for the year and reserved space for future interest rate hikes. The market's previous pricing of interest rate cuts in the third quarter and at the end of the year fell through, and the duration of high interest rates has been significantly prolonged.

2. Gold loses key checkpoint, short-term risks are completely amplified

Affected by hawkish expectations, the bullish trend in precious metals has rapidly fermented: gold was the first to fall below the important defensive level of $4100, and on June 24th, it fell to $4069 in intraday trading, approaching the psychological and technical dual strong support of $4000, and the range decline continued to expand.

The price of $4000 is not an ordinary level: it is not only the center of gold trading throughout the year, but also the cost line for institutional long positions and the risk control stop loss line for ETFs. Once the point is effectively breached, a chain of negative feedback will be triggered: massive profit taking long positions will exit, leveraged margin positions will be forced to close, global gold ETFs will continue to experience net outflows, and short-term corrections will directly evolve into accelerated sharp declines.

It needs to be clarified that the three major long-term positive logics for gold, namely the continuous purchase of gold by the central bank, global geopolitical hedging, and the long-term weakening of the US dollar, have not disappeared. However, in the short term, they have lost to the holding cost pressure brought by high interest rates, and the short-term liquidity pricing priority is permanently higher than the long-term fundamental logic.

3、 Bottom level logic breakdown: Gold is not afraid of falling, only afraid of real interest rates rising

There is a common misconception among the public that gold will always resist decline and panic market will inevitably rise. On the contrary, the weakest enemy of gold has never been a stock market decline, but a combination of a strong US dollar and rising real interest rates.

1. Attribute essence: Gold is an interest free stock asset that does not generate interest, dividends, or operating cash flow; When market interest rates rise, the opportunity cost of abandoning interest bearing wealth management by holding gold increases sharply, and funds naturally reduce their holdings of precious metals and increase their holdings of US Treasury cash.

2. Market causality: The gold bull market in 2025 is supported by three positive factors: expectations of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, a decline in the US dollar, and a drop in real interest rates; The market reversal in June 2026 is due to a reversal in interest rate expectations, directly offsetting the valuation premium of precious metals.

3. Risk avoidance reconstruction: The current market risk avoidance logic has switched. Under the environment of high interest rates, the optimal hedging assets become dollar cash and short-term treasury bond instead of gold. The gold hedging function is still effective, but it only takes effect in the event of a sudden geopolitical black swan market. In normalized macro trading, interest rate priority is always higher than hedging attributes.

4、 The synchronous decline of gold and silver: Essentially, it is a tightening of market liquidity and a unified reduction in leverage of funds

The simultaneous decline of gold and silver in this round does not mean the failure of the safe haven system, but rather the global capital's unified contraction of liquidity and reduction of crowded positions.

Loose cycle logic: The weakening of the US dollar and the decline in interest rates are favorable for gold to hedge and preserve its value. Silver, combined with industrial AI chip demand, has far greater elasticity than gold, and both precious metals are strengthening simultaneously.

Tightening cycle logic: The hawkish stance of the Federal Reserve has pushed up the US dollar and interest rates, causing the entire market to become more expensive. Institutions are uniformly reducing their holdings in two types of positions: the first type is the high rise and profitable long positions in precious metals in 2025; The second category is AI semiconductor growth stocks with high valuation bubbles and extremely crowded positions.

The volatility of silver far exceeds that of gold, with a dual negative impact on its core: on the one hand, it is under pressure from interest free asset interest rates, and on the other hand, AI capital expenditures are slowing down, semiconductor production cuts are expected to cool down industrial metal demand, resulting in a double downward revision of its valuation. In short, the current market does not differentiate between good and bad assets, only reducing holdings of previously held assets.

5、 South Korean stock market circuit breaker: only a macro indicator, not the source of the decline

In this round of market trend, the South Korean KOSPI index fell sharply and hit the circuit breaker, which was misjudged by the market as chip capital fleeing and dragging down gold prices. In fact, the cause and effect were completely reversed.

The AI semiconductor sector in South Korea is the most crowded high interest rate sensitive asset in the world: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron Technology storage chip companies, relying on AI computing power dividends to double their valuation by 2025, fully leveraged positions on the exchange, and assets are extremely sensitive to changes in discount rates.

Real transmission logic: hawkish expectations from the Federal Reserve drive up global funding costs → overvalued growth assets take the lead in deleveraging → highly concentrated South Korean AI stock index collapses and circuit breakers first → emotional diffusion coupled with bullish investment in precious metals.

The South Korean market is just a display of macro pressure, not the source of market downturn. All popular assets around the world are simultaneously undergoing high interest rate revaluation.

6、 Market differentiation prediction: AI looks at orders, gold and silver only look at interest rates

The main trends of the two types of assets in the future are completely separated and cannot be confused:

1. AI semiconductor industry chain: The core variables are downstream computing power orders and corporate financial guidance. Micron Technology and Nvidia's impressive financial reports determine whether the AI industry can withstand the pressure of high interest rates; If computing power orders continue to increase, high valuations can rely on fundamentals to stabilize valuations and simultaneously boost demand in the silver industry; If the financial report falls short of expectations, growth stocks will continue to decline and risk sentiment will further contract.

2. The gold and silver industry chain: The core variables remain constant at non farm employment, inflation data, and statements from the Federal Reserve. The rise and fall of AI market cannot offset the pressure of rising real interest rates on precious metals; Only when the sharp decline in AI forces the Federal Reserve to restart expectations of interest rate cuts, can gold experience a reversal and repair.

Core distinction: Currently, it belongs to interest rate revaluation valuation, rather than industry fundamental falsification. The bull market in gold and the long-term logic of AI industry growth have not come to an end, but the cost of capital has risen, and the market needs to lower asset valuation premiums.

7、 The three key validation lines in the future market determine the timing of market reversal

By combining the Federal Reserve's policies, exchange rates, and asset attributes, and closely monitoring the three core indicators in the future, we can determine the inflection point for gold and silver:

Firstly, the policy stance of the Federal Reserve: If inflation and employment data continue to strengthen in the future, the expectation of interest rate hikes will increase, and gold will deeply test the underlying support; If the data falls, hawkish expectations will cool down, and precious metals will enter a window of repair;

Secondly, the trend of the US dollar index: the US dollar is strongly negatively correlated with gold, and the US dollar continues to strengthen, with a high probability of falling below the $4000 mark; Only when the US dollar turns around and falls, can gold and silver quickly stabilize and rebound;

Thirdly, the linkage degree of the silver industry: Silver has both commodity and financial attributes. If the AI sector stabilizes and recovers, and industrial demand is expected to recover, silver will rebound first, becoming a forward-looking signal for the precious metal market.

Conclusion at the end of the article

2025 is a year of simultaneous dividend growth: loose liquidity, AI、 Gold and silver are all rising across the board; 2026 is the year of differentiated reassessment: tightening liquidity and collective pressure on consolidated assets.

The drop of gold below $4000 provides the most straightforward insight to the market: there is no absolute safe asset class, and in the high interest rate cycle of the Federal Reserve, the safe haven premium gives way to the cost of capital premium.

The foundation of the long-term bull market for gold has not been broken, but in the short term, if you want to return to the upward channel, you must wait for the interest rate inflection point to land; Prior to this, all rebounds were aimed at repairing the market, and bulls still need to avoid the risk of position stampede.