4. Sentiment for Gold – Just another cold shower?

Sentiment Optix for gold as of February 17th, 2026. Source: Sentimentrader

Since spring 2024, gold sentiment data has repeatedly shown overheating, each time cooled by sharp pullbacks that cleared the deck for further gains.​

Two and a half weeks ago, Optix signaled extreme optimism again, followed by the expected sharp correction. Now, watch if sentiment stabilizes around 60—or if true panic is needed for the next leg up.​

Optix at 64 is neutral. Ideally, it turns up above 55 soon; otherwise, an extended correction grows likely.​

As expected, gold rallied from mid-December. The January 28 new all-time high and trend reversal came earlier than seasonal norms.​ But the sector remains in a favorable seasonal phase through March/April. Odds favor at least a solid recovery rally in the next two months.​

Drastically higher all-time highs until early summer aren’t seasonally supported though – the window is narrowing. Either gold recovers to USD 5,150 to USD 5,350 by April/May and consolidates above USD 5,000 into summer, or can directly attack USD 6,000. Next contrarian buy window should come somewhere between June and August.

For now, the seasonal light stays green through at least March.

6. Macro Update – Global Power Shift

The global economy is undergoing its most profound transformation in decades. While China aggressively architects a new world order, the United States finds itself mired in a phase of profound internal instability and division. Persistent budget battles—complete with government shutdowns—intraparty fractures under President Trump, swirling corruption allegations, arbitrary dismantling of federal agencies, controversial tariffs, foreign policy isolationism, and a staggering deficit explosion exceeding USD 34 trillion have severely hampered the U.S. administration’s ability to act decisively, all while the midterm elections on November 3rd, 2026, loom as a direct threat to Republican majorities.​

China’s AI Dominance

In stark contrast, China is executing the most ambitious industrial policy since the Marshall Plan. Just last weekend, five leading Chinese AI firms—Zhipu, ByteDance, Alibaba, Moonshot, and DeepSeek—simultaneously announced major model upgrades, with their systems costing roughly one-sixth to one-quarter as much as their American counterparts. Meanwhile, the U.S. debates fresh tariffs after pouring USD 380 billion into AI infrastructure with scant measurable returns.​

China is not merely catching up; it is actively supplanting the Western “tech stack.” The “Four Dragons”—Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren, and Enflame—have recently gone public or reached IPO readiness, Huawei is doubling production of its Ascend chips to 600,000 units annually while plotting to surpass Nvidia, and Bernstein forecasts that U.S. export curbs will slash Nvidia’s China market share from 40% to 8%, potentially elevating Huawei to 50%. Beijing is mobilizing USD 70 billion in chip subsidies and mandating that state telecom firms replace AMD and Intel components by 2027.​

Energy Transition as Growth Engine

China is also advancing with strategic foresight in the energy sector, aiming squarely for global leadership. Last year alone, it invested nearly USD 1 trillion in clean energy—four times more than in fossil fuels—a move that likely propelled about one-third of its GDP growth. The country now generates a terawatt of solar capacity annually, commands 70% of global EV production (with nearly half of all new cars worldwide being electric vehicles), and uses this to power its own AI data centers with affordable renewables. The U.S., by comparison, remains mired in debates over wind subsidies, even as China single-handedly installed 277 gigawatts of solar in one year.​

Gold as Strategic Reserve

China’s Gold Stock Levels as of February 17th, 2026. Source: @cryptorand

China remains steadfast in its long-term financial strategy as well. Its central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), has been steadily accumulating gold for years; in January alone, official reserves swelled by another USD 51 billion to USD 369.6 billion, though the World Gold Council estimates the true holdings are double that figure.​

Beijing is further diversifying commodity price discovery by expanding its official gold reserves to 2,308 tonnes and scaling up renminbi-denominated gold contracts through the Shanghai Gold Exchange. Yuan trade with nations like Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Indonesia is surging, underpinned by record exports of USD 3.77 trillion and a surplus of USD 1.19 trillion.​

U.S. Treasury Drawdown

Chinese Holdings of Treasuries as of February 16th, 2026. Source: Bloomberg, US Department of the Treasury

At the same time, China has dramatically slashed its U.S. Treasury holdings from USD 1.32 trillion to just USD 683 billion—the lowest level since 2008 and now a mere 7.3% of its total reserves, down from 28.8% in 2011. The trajectory is unmistakable: a deliberate pivot from U.S. Treasuries toward gold.​

Yet the narrative of de-risking and a post-dollar world overlooks Beijing’s desperate liquidity juggling act amid 11 straight quarters of GDP deflation, 40 months of negative producer prices, a brutal property crisis eroding domestic demand, and relentless capital flight. These Treasury sales are about propping up the yuan, managing liquidity, and dodging Russia’s fate of overnight frozen overseas assets.​

Energy Dollar Trap

The most inescapable chain persists, however: China cannot break free from dollar-denominated energy imports. It guzzles about 11 million barrels of crude oil daily—covering roughly 70% of domestic consumption—and LNG imports are projected to hit 140 million tons annually by 2030 as it phases out coal for air quality and CO2 reduction goals.

Virtually all these hydrocarbon imports are invoiced in U.S. dollars. While China has inked some yuan deals with Russia, they cover less than 20% of the total; the rest—Saudi crude, Iraqi oil, Angolan crude, U.S. LNG, Qatari LNG, Australian LNG—is billed in dollars. Thus, the dollar remains indispensable to China’s energy transition, trapping it in a cage forged from methane and oil molecules coursing through pipelines, terminals, and tankers, every transaction settled in USD.​

China’s Treasury reductions thus prove no sign of dollar weakness but rather underscore the urgent, calculated stewardship required to navigate an economy where the U.S. dollar remains unavoidable.​

Dollar Dominance via Infrastructure

Accordingly, China can hoard gold and ink yuan swap lines with Argentina or Saudi Arabia for headlines all it wants—but when an LNG tanker docks in Ningbo or an oil supertanker pulls into Qingdao, the bill arrives in dollars.

The U.S., conversely, does not just produce energy; it controls the global flows, enforcing a durable dollar dominance that even deep Treasury markets cannot match. This command over energy streams is bolstered by America’s own energy abundance, military supremacy, and profound financial markets.​

China Shifts From U.S. Treasuries To Gold as of February 16th, 2026. Source: Giacomo Prandelli

China’s Treasury sales thus serve primarily liquidity management, not a bid to trigger a dollar collapse. The U.S. responds to its demographic shrinkage and colossal debt piles with quantitative easing and fiscal dominance.​

Gold: Eternal Anchor in the AI Age

Central Bank Gold Reserves as of February 15th, 2026. Source: mining.com

All these developments remain quite bullish for gold prices, as not only China’s central bank but also Poland, Turkey, and India relentlessly build reserves, forging a structural price floor. Though the recent rally stalled at USD 5,602—a significant peak—gold endures as the premier safe-haven asset amid tectonic global power shifts, geopolitical frictions, and persistent central bank buying that underpins prices long-term.​

In the future, robots and AI will define our lives. Demographics and debt will stifle organic growth, channeling capital into software and networks. True values will gain primacy: Intelligence will detach from human labor, autonomous AI agents will supplant traditional demographics to enable expansion without population growth or jobs, meaning will become the scarcest resource, creativity and authentic connections will take center stage, and machines will refine intelligence—freeing humans, ideally, to reclaim their lives.

Here, gold proves indispensable as an anchor, for while fiat currencies erode under exponentially mounting debt mountains and algorithmically spawned liquidity, gold stands alone as the asset that cannot be infinitely replicated.

Its scarcity is geologically inscribed—not politically bargained or digitally rewritten. In a world where nearly every scarcity dissolves via autonomous agents and exponential computing, the engineered absence of scarcity emerges as the core risk.

Gold inverts this logic: It embodies scarcity by definition. The more prosperity turns immaterial, networked, and replicable, the more balance sheets and psyches crave an anchor beyond digital control—physical, decentralized, ancient, and future-proof. Gold is thus not merely a store of past value but a forward-looking shield against the devaluation dynamics of a post-demographic, hyper-productive yet inflation-vulnerable civilization, and an unshakeable rock amid geopolitical tempests.

7. Conclusion: Gold- Euphoria, Crash, Consolidation