What's Next for Global Markets in 2026? Here's What Major Institutions Are Betting On

Following a volatile 2024, financial markets face critical inflection points in 2026. Across commodities, cryptocurrencies, equities, and forex, leading institutions are painting a complex picture of opportunities and risks. Let’s unpack the consensus and divergences shaping investment strategies for the year ahead.

The Precious Metals Story: Gold and Silver Lead the Charge

Gold’s Structural Tailwinds Remain Intact

Gold delivered a spectacular 60% rally in 2025 — its strongest performance since 1979 — fueled by Fed rate cuts, relentless central bank accumulation, and persistent geopolitical friction. The World Gold Council projects further momentum, with gold potentially appreciating 5-15% in 2026 under baseline scenarios. In more dovish scenarios involving pronounced economic deceleration and aggressive monetary easing, the upside could expand to 15-30%.

Investment bank price targets cluster aggressively to the upside. Goldman Sachs anticipates USD 4,900/oz by end-2026, anchored by sustained central bank demand and ETF capital inflows. Bank of America takes an even more bullish stance, targeting USD 5,000/oz, citing widening U.S. fiscal imbalances and accelerating debt accumulation as persistent tailwinds for the yellow metal.

Silver’s Supply Deficit Becomes a Price Catalyst

2025 saw silver outperform gold materially, driven by tightening supply conditions and compression in the gold-silver ratio. The Silver Institute has identified a structural supply shortfall in global silver markets, reflecting robust industrial consumption, recovering investor demand, and constrained supply growth. This imbalance is expected to persist — and potentially intensify — throughout 2026, supporting prices.

UBS has lifted its 2026 silver forecast to USD 58-60/oz, with upside potential toward USD 65/oz. Bank of America echoes this optimism, also projecting USD 65/oz by year-end 2026. The confluence of industrial demand and investment flows suggests silver could outpace gold once again.

Crypto Markets at an Inflection: Bitcoin and Ethereum Under the Microscope

Bitcoin: Cyclical Debate Rages On

Bitcoin finished 2025 near flat after touching fresh all-time highs during the year. Current pricing sits at $93.82K, presenting a mixed technical picture heading into 2026.

Standard Chartered downwardly revised its Bitcoin target from USD 200,000 to USD 150,000, attributing the shift to anticipated waning government bitcoin purchases, though ETF inflows should remain a significant offsetting factor. Bernstein similarly projects USD 150,000 for 2026, with a more bullish USD 200,000 target for 2027. The firm argues Bitcoin has transcended its traditional four-year cycle, now operating within an elongated bull framework.

Morgan Stanley contests this narrative, maintaining that Bitcoin’s four-year cyclicality persists and warning that the current bull phase is maturing. The disagreement reflects genuine structural uncertainty: whether tokenization and institutional adoption have fundamentally altered Bitcoin’s price dynamics.

Ethereum: Tokenization Wave Unlocks Upside Optionality

Ethereum also concluded 2025 near its entry price, though recent strength shows $3.23K — up nearly 2% in recent trading. JPMorgan emphasizes the transformative potential of tokenization, which increasingly relies on Ethereum’s infrastructure. Tom Lee, a prominent crypto strategist, forecasts ETH reaching USD 20,000 in 2026, arguing that Ethereum bottomed in 2025 and faces a significant re-rating as tokenization gains traction across traditional finance and enterprise blockchain applications.

U.S. Equities: AI Investment Cycle Sustains Upward Bias

The Nasdaq 100 surged 22% in 2025, outpacing the S&P 500’s 18% gain and extending three consecutive years of outperformance. Momentum appears poised to continue.

JPMorgan identifies sustained capital expenditure from hyperscale data centre operators — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta among them — as the structural underpinning for 2026 equity strength. Cumulative capex could reach several hundred billion dollars cumulatively by 2026, providing tailwinds to semiconductor and infrastructure constituents like NVIDIA, AMD, and Broadcom.

JPMorgan outlines S&P 500 scenarios approaching 7,500 by year-end 2026, while Deutsche Bank presents more constructive cases targeting 8,000, contingent on robust earnings expansion and sustained AI-driven investment. Extrapolating from S&P 500 targets, the Nasdaq 100 could surpass 27,000 points by 2026 — a move reflecting continued tech sector primacy within broader equity markets.

Foreign Exchange: Divergent Policy Paths Create Trading Dynamics

EUR/USD: Monetary Policy Divergence as the Primary Driver

EUR/USD appreciated 13% in 2025, marking its strongest year in nearly eight years. The primary catalyst: dollar weakness amid Fed rate reductions, coupled with ECB policy restraint.

For 2026, JPMorgan and Nomura forecast EUR/USD reaching 1.20, while Bank of America adopts a more aggressive 1.22 target. Morgan Stanley injects caution, projecting an initial push to 1.23 in early 2026 before a retreat to 1.16 in the second half, as U.S. economic outperformance potentially attracts capital reflows.

USD/JPY: Carry Trade Unwinding and Rate Differential Compression

USD/JPY declined modestly in 2025 (down ~1%), setting up a divergent outlook for 2026. JPMorgan and Barclays maintain bullish stances, with JPMorgan projecting USD/JPY rising to 164 by year-end. The logic: BOJ rate hike expectations are already priced in, and Japanese fiscal expansion may weigh on yen valuation. At current implied levels, this would suggest JPY strength versus the dollar — approximately 27,000 JPY per USD in inverse terms — remains unlikely near-term.

Citigroup and Nomura adopt the opposing view, contending that narrowing interest rate differentials will reduce carry trade attractiveness. Should U.S. macro data weaken, unwinding could accelerate, driving yen appreciation. Nomura projects USD/JPY falling to 140 before 2026 concludes.

Energy Markets: Oversupply Pressures Remain Elevated

Crude oil collapsed nearly 20% in 2025 as OPEC+ restored production and U.S. output expanded. Forward guidance remains decidedly bearish.

Goldman Sachs outlines a downside scenario with WTI averaging USD 52/barrel and Brent USD 56/barrel in 2026, assuming sustained supply surplus conditions. JPMorgan similarly flags downside scenarios, projecting WTI averaging near USD 54/barrel and Brent USD 58/barrel if supply surpluses persist and global demand growth moderates.

The consensus message: crude oil faces structural headwinds absent a significant geopolitical shock or demand reacceleration.

The Bottom Line

2026 markets are shaping up as a tale of divergence — gold and silver benefiting from monetary easing and geopolitical flux, crypto assets riding tokenization optionality, equities sustained by AI capex, and energy facing surplus pressures. Within this framework, currency markets will likely remain volatile, with policy divergence between the Fed, ECB, and BOJ driving outsized moves in EUR/USD and USD/JPY. Investors navigating this landscape must remain nimble, calibrating exposures to each asset class’s distinct risk-return profile.