Gold Rebounded After the Election. Why the World Gold Council Isn’t Calling a Bottom Yet.

Gold rose about 3% on 4 November as the dollar fell after Democrats won both chambers of Congress. Central banks reported 61 tonnes of net gold purchases in September and gold ETFs took in US$2.7 billion in October, and the World Gold Council’s own test finds two of its three conditions for an interim bottom in place, not all three. We separate buying gold from moving it, and publication dates from purchase dates.

Published November 5, 2026 · Updated November 6, 2026 · 20 min read

Key Takeaways

• Gold rose 3.35% on 4 November to close at US$4,060.02 on Investing.com’s series, as the dollar fell after Democrats won both chambers of Congress; at 19:56 GMT on 5 November it was up a further 1.01% at US$4,101.21.
• Central banks reported 61 tonnes of net gold purchases in September, the most in a month this year, led by Poland’s 25 tonnes and China’s 23. Year to date the reported total, 228 tonnes, is still 7% below 2025.
• The World Gold Council estimates 321 tonnes of official buying in the third quarter, of which 120 tonnes was reported by central banks: around 63% is unreported, and the estimate does not name the buyers.
• Gold ETFs took in US$2.7 billion in October and their holdings rose 19 tonnes to a record 4,275, while managed-money traders cut COMEX net longs by 53 tonnes.
• The Council’s framework finds two of three conditions for an interim bottom: gold far below its 200-day average and a dollar surge. Speculative positioning has not yet washed out, and the test covers three months, not the year ahead.

Gold rose about 3% on Wednesday 4 November 2026 as the dollar fell, after Democrats won control of both chambers of the US Congress. In the two days after the vote the World Gold Council published its September central-bank statistics, its October report on gold exchange-traded funds and a monthly commentary asking whether gold has found a floor. This article sets out what that research shows about who kept adding gold as the price fell in September and October, why some large movements of gold are not purchases at all, and what the Council’s own test for a bottom does and does not say. Quantities are in metric tonnes, dollar amounts are US dollars, and gold prices are per troy ounce.

61 tonnes Net gold purchases reported by central banks in September 2026, the highest monthly total of the year so far (World Gold Council). Poland reported 25 tonnes and China 23. These are September’s reserve changes, published on 4 November: they say nothing about buying after the US election.

What did gold do after the US election?

Gold rebounded: Reuters reported spot gold at US$4,046.74 at 12:34 GMT on Wednesday 4 November, an intraday reading, up 3% on the day and on course for its largest daily gain since 19 August, as the dollar slid after Democrats took control of the Senate and the House. On Investing.com’s daily series gold closed that day at US$4,060.02, up 3.35%, and at 19:56 GMT on Thursday 5 November it stood at US$4,101.21, up a further 1.01%: a live reading, not a close.

The rebound started from a low base. The World Gold Council’s monthly commentary, published on 5 November, records that gold ended October at US$3,913 on the LBMA Gold Price PM, down 6.3% in the month, and notes that the spot price was around 25% below its January all-time high. On the same benchmark gold was set at US$4,037.80 on 4 November, 3.2% above its 30 October price of US$3,913.25. The commentary’s figures run to the end of October, so they cannot reflect the election result, although the Council expects the policy outcomes of the midterms to be “pivotal”. It asks a narrower question: whether the conditions that have historically come before a recovery are in place.

For a reader trying to judge the rebound, two questions are worth keeping apart. Is there evidence that large buyers kept adding gold during the fall? And does that evidence say where the price goes next? The first has a stronger answer than the second.

Did central banks keep buying gold in September?

They did in September: central banks reported 61 tonnes of net gold purchases that month, the highest monthly total of 2026 so far, according to the World Gold Council’s compilation published on 4 November. The Council’s release for August, published on 6 October, reported 39 tonnes. Set side by side, the two published figures give an increase of about 56%, before any revision to either month, and revisions do happen: the year-to-date total to August was 170 tonnes, which with September’s 61 would make 231, against the 228 now reported. The run of official buying is the subject of the Academy’s Market Context section.

The country figures are the Council’s, from its September map of changes by country, which shows changes of one tonne or more only and is not a complete ledger of transactions. The monthly total excludes the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan, which reports quarterly. Russia was the largest seller.

The strong month has a counterweight. Year to date, central banks reported 228 tonnes of net purchases, 7% less than in the same months of 2025, so a stronger September does not mean every measure of official buying has picked up.

Recent publication does not mean recent buying

These are September’s reserve changes, published the day after the election. China’s 23 tonnes was already public in China’s own reserve figures, and we examined it on 11 October in our article on China’s September purchase. The Council notes that it extended China’s run of monthly additions to 23 months.

What the compilation adds is the country picture for the whole month. It does not show that a new sovereign buyer entered the market this week, give the dates or prices of individual purchases, or show whether buying continued through October’s fall.

How much central-bank buying goes unreported?

Most of it, in the third quarter: the World Gold Council estimates that central banks and other official institutions bought a net 321 tonnes between July and September, up 42% on a year earlier, of which 120 tonnes appeared in reported purchases. The other 201 tonnes, about 63% of the estimate, is activity the Council says is missing from official statistics because of reporting delays or non-disclosure. That gap is not a list of identified secret buyers, and nothing in the Council’s figures assigns it to China or to any other country.

Who else bought gold in the third quarter, and how the reported and estimated figures compare, is in our article on the Council’s third-quarter figures.

The monthly and quarterly figures cannot be added together: September is part of the third quarter, so adding September’s 61 tonnes to the 321-tonne estimate would count the same buying twice. The difference between the two series also explains an apparent contradiction. The Council’s estimate for the first nine months, including unreported buying, is 675 tonnes, 6% more than a year earlier, while the narrower reported series is 7% lower. They answer different questions. Official buying of this size remains substantial, but neither the headline estimate nor its unreported part says when the next turn in the price will come.

Did investors buy gold ETFs while the price fell?

On balance, yes: the World Gold Council’s October report on gold exchange-traded funds, published on 5 November, records US$2.7 billion of net inflows in the month and a 19-tonne rise in the funds’ holdings, to 4,275 tonnes, which the Council calls another month-end record. It was the fourth month running in which the funds took in money.

The buying was not even across regions. European funds led, with UK-listed funds the largest, and the Council notes that Europe has now had net inflows for 18 consecutive weeks. North America was the only region with outflows, all of them from US-domiciled funds; Canadian funds took in money. The regional figures are rounded and add up to US$2.65 billion against the global US$2.7 billion. Nor did the inflows protect fund holders from the fall: the funds’ assets under management dropped 6% to US$542 billion as the price fell.

The same report records that managed-money traders cut their net long position in COMEX gold futures by 53 tonnes in October, on the regulator’s positioning report as of 28 October. Holding a fund backed by bullion and holding a futures position are different exposures, a distinction the Academy’s Physical vs Paper section sets out. That the two moved in opposite directions helps explain how accumulation in one channel can coexist with a falling price. The narrower conclusion is that some investment channels kept adding gold while others cut their exposure.

The ETF figures continue the pattern in our article on September’s ETF buying, when fund holdings also rose while the price fell.

Is every large movement of gold new demand?

No: gold that an owner already holds can change vault, country or legal status without anyone holding more gold than before. The four examples below show why, and they should not be read as independent confirmations of sovereign buying.

London: a larger stock, not an identified buyer

LBMA’s vault figures, published on 7 October, put the gold held in London at 9,821 tonnes at the end of September, 1.96% more than a month earlier. From those rounded figures the increase works out at about 189 tonnes, our arithmetic rather than a flow LBMA reports. The figures cover the London vaults that offer custody services, including the Bank of England’s holdings. They do not say who owns the extra metal or why it arrived.

More gold stored in London is not, by itself, evidence of new central-bank buying, of a shortage somewhere else, or of a floor under the price. Gold an investor already owns can move into a London vault without the investor holding any more of it, and the same bars can appear in more than one dataset, so a vault increase should not be added to ETF or central-bank figures. This is September’s stock, published in October: it is not a post-election movement.

The Netherlands: 86 tonnes relocated, reserves unchanged

De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank, gave the clearest example. In a press release of 2 September it said that between March and August 2026 about 86 tonnes of its gold had been transferred to London from the roughly 313 tonnes it held in the United States and Canada.

Most of the 86 tonnes never made the journey. DNB sold about 59 tonnes in New York and bought gold meeting current international standards in London. It moved more than 27 tonnes physically from the United States and Canada to its own vault in Zeist, and sent a similar quantity of market-standard bars from Zeist to London, which avoided remelting bars. DNB stated that the total size of its gold reserves, about 612 tonnes, stayed the same; its stated aims were tradability, a better spread of storage and preparedness for a crisis. Our article on central banks rethinking where they hold gold covers the operation in detail.

That is significant reserve management, but it is not 86 tonnes of additional sovereign demand. Nor does an operation completed by August explain London’s September increase without further evidence.

Canada: purchases of Canadian-held gold, not identified government buying

Statistics Canada’s trade release of 4 November reported that exports of unwrought gold, silver and platinum-group metals, a category largely made up of unwrought gold, rose 16.8% in September. It attributed the rise to higher purchases of Canadian-held gold by US residents, partly offset by lower shipments of gold to the United Kingdom.

That is a change in value, in current dollars, for a mixed category, not a 16.8% rise in tonnes of gold. “US residents” does not identify a government buyer, and the release does not say how much of the change in ownership involved gold crossing the border. It is evidence of commercial activity between the two countries, not evidence that the US government was adding to its reserves.

COMEX: check the metal, not just its label

COMEX’s rules sort the metal in the depositories it approves into classes. Eligible metal is acceptable for delivery against a futures contract but has no warrant issued; registered metal is eligible metal for which a warrant has been issued; and since 2019 pledged metal is registered metal whose warrant has been deposited with the clearing house as collateral. A warrant is a document of title, issued by the depository, for a stated quantity of metal stored there that meets the contract’s specifications.

A move between the two categories does not, by itself, show that metal left a vault. A claim that gold was withdrawn needs the dated warehouse report’s receipts, shipments and total inventory, not only its registered figure, and even a confirmed withdrawal does not identify a government buyer. This article uses no daily COMEX inventory figures.

What does the World Gold Council’s bottoming framework say?

It says gold “may be nearing an interim bottom”: two of the three conditions that have historically come before recoveries in gold’s downtrends are in place, and the third is not. The Council’s commentary of 5 November, by Johan Palmberg, looked at bear phases since 2005, defined as gold’s 50-day average staying below its 200-day average for at least a month, and at three signals that fire when a reading is among the most extreme 30% of bear-phase months.

• Price below trend: gold trading well below its 200-day moving average. The Council assesses this as met.
• Dollar surge: a sharp rally in the US dollar index measured against the past 52 weeks. Also met.
• Speculative washout: speculative futures positions, combining managed money and smaller traders, falling to unusually low levels relative to open interest. Not met: in the Council’s words, positioning “remains elevated”.

In the Council’s historical sample, gold was higher three months later after nine of the ten months that met at least two conditions, and after all five that met all three. Those five came in October 2008, May 2012, November 2015, December 2016 and September 2022, and the Council counts signals at least three months apart. Across all 24 bear-phase observations in the sample, whatever the signals said, gold was higher three months on 63% of the time, so the framework improves on a base rate that was already better than even.

These are small samples chosen in hindsight, not a 90% or 100% probability that gold rises from here. The Council itself says the framework “only speaks to the next three months” and “says nothing about the year ahead”, and its assessment uses data from before the election, not a fresh calculation after the dollar’s fall on 4 November. Its own conclusion is that “the signal to look for is a clear-out in positioning”. The Council’s wider view is more constructive: it says the fundamental backdrop makes it more likely that this is “a correction rather than the start of a prolonged downtrend”, while its technical analysis says a test of US$3,857, a level of support it identifies, “may yet be seen”.

Our reading is that the framework offers a testable hypothesis about a recovery, not a confirmed trading signal. The missing condition is about futures positioning, and a vault transfer or a reserve relocation cannot stand in for it.

What evidence would come next?

For official buying, the next useful evidence is reserve data for October, not another compilation of September: a reported rise in tonnes says more than a rise in the dollar value of reserves, which moves with the price. For investment demand, the question is whether ETF holdings keep rising through the rebound. For physical markets, it is dated changes in total inventories and documented transactions, with ownership, location and warrant status kept apart.

Among the next economic releases is the US employment report for October, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday 6 November. The Macro Conditions Score reflects macro conditions historically associated with precious-metals performance; this article does not quote a reading, and nothing in historical demand data is a reason by itself to change it.

The Bigger Picture

Taken together, the evidence supports a distinction between demand that continued and a price direction that is confirmed. The central-bank and ETF figures show buying over their own reporting periods; the London, Dutch, Canadian and COMEX examples show why a large number attached to gold is not necessarily an extra purchase.

None of the purchase evidence reviewed here shows a new, large sovereign purchase made after the election. That is a limit of what these sources establish, not proof that no such buying took place.

For the next gold headline, three questions are more useful than the size of the number. When did it happen? Did ownership or only location change? And did the buyer’s total gold holdings actually rise? The central-bank evidence shows official buying continuing into September while the price fell. It does not remove the need for confirmation that the price trend has changed.

Sources and Methodology

Every source below was read on 5 November 2026. Central-bank figures are the World Gold Council’s: the September total, year-to-date total and country changes from its September statistics (the country changes from the map of changes by country published with it), the August total from its October release, and the third-quarter estimate, reported share and nine-month figures from Gold Demand Trends Q3 2026. ETF flows, holdings, assets and the managed-money change are from the Council’s October ETF report. The October price, the spot price’s distance from its January high and the framework, including its historical table, are from the Council’s commentary of 5 November. Our arithmetic: the 56% rise from August to September (61 ÷ 39 − 1, from figures as first published), the 79% share of Poland and China (48 ÷ 61), the 201 unreported tonnes (321 − 120) and the 13 tonnes of other net buying (61 − 25 − 23). The London increase is 9,821 − 9,821 ÷ 1.0196, about 189 tonnes, from LBMA’s rounded figures; LBMA does not report it as a flow. The DNB figures are from its press release. The Canadian figures are from Statistics Canada’s release, which presents trade in seasonally adjusted current dollars. COMEX definitions are from the exchange’s 2019 rule filing with the CFTC, used for definitions only, not for any current stock figure. Market prices are Reuters’ report of 4 November, Investing.com’s daily-history rows and LBMA’s published Gold Price PM, all read on 5 November; the 3.2% is our arithmetic (4,037.80 ÷ 3,913.25 − 1).

Conflicts of interest, stated plainly. The World Gold Council is a membership organisation funded by gold-mining companies, and its purpose includes developing demand for gold; its framework and its reading of the market are the analysis of an interested party and are attributed as such. LBMA is the trade association of the London bullion market. Kitco, which carries Reuters’ report, also sells bullion. GoldSilverPortfolio has no affiliate or commercial relationship with any organisation named in this article.

Primary sources

• World Gold Council — Central Bank Gold Statistics: September 2026, 4 November 2026: 61 t of net purchases, 228 t year to date, and the map of September changes by country
• World Gold Council — Central banks continue summer spree in August, 6 October 2026: 39 t of reported net buying in August
• World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends Q3 2026: Central banks, 3 November 2026: 321 t estimated, 120 t reported, 675 t in the first nine months
• World Gold Council — Gold ETF Flows: October 2026, “Europe remains in driver’s seat”, 5 November 2026
• World Gold Council — Gold Market Commentary: Where floor art thou?, Johan Palmberg, 5 November 2026: Table 1, Table 2 and Figure 1
• LBMA — London Gold and Silver Vault Data for September 2026, 7 October 2026, and London Vault Data, coverage notes
• De Nederlandsche Bank — DNB improves tradability of gold reserves, press release, 2 September 2026
• Statistics Canada — Canadian international merchandise trade, September 2026, The Daily, 4 November 2026
• COMEX — Submission 19-284: amendments to Rules 703 and 705, filed with the CFTC on 29 July 2019: definitions of eligible and registered metal and of a warrant
• Reuters — “Gold gains 3% as dollar slides after Democratic midterm gains”, 4 November 2026, as carried by Kitco
• Investing.com — XAU/USD historical data, daily rows for 3 and 4 November 2026 and the live price at 19:56 GMT on 5 November
• LBMA — LBMA Precious Metal Prices, LBMA Gold Price PM in US dollars, 30 October to 4 November 2026
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics — Schedule of selected releases for November 2026, read 5 November 2026