Max Layton, Global Head of Commodity Research at Citigroup, stated that with the formation of Trump's agenda, the outlook for oil prices next year is becoming more pessimistic, but the key driving factors for the rise in gold prices still exist, and it is expected that gold prices will continue to rise in 2025.

Layton said that the background for oil has become quite pessimistic after the election, and Trump will start imposing high tariffs on foreign imports thereafter.

He said, "The prospect of using tariffs to reduce the budget deficit, or at least not increase the budget, may cloud the market, so tariffs related to this will be a problem in 2025. More broadly, I believe that Trump will be very bearish on oil. Many of his statements are about how he hopes to encourage drilling in the United States, and Bessant also talked about the United States increasing its supply by 3 million barrels over a period of time." "" We are talking about a ceasefire, not a war. In this annual outlook, we have done a lot of work to study what impact it may have if the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and Russia Ukraine significantly eases

Layton stated that the easing of geopolitical tensions will release a large amount of oil. He said, "As we believe, this will alleviate or at least increase visible inventory and mitigate some of the balancing effects on the market

He added that even if Trump does not fully deliver on his promises, oil prices in 2025 are still pessimistic.

Layton said, "For example, in a basic scenario, we believe that Trump will be targeted to fulfill most of his promises, but not all of them, certainly not in the first year." "Therefore, targeted tariffs will be imposed, and some easing measures will be targeted in the Middle East or Russia Ukraine related affairs, but not necessarily both. For example, we do not want Iran to continue to produce at full capacity in the next 6 to 12 months, and we assume there will be some impact. In a basic scenario, we will reduce 200000 to 300000 barrels in the first few quarters of next year. However, even so, overall, we are still targeted net bearish on oil

Later, he talked about Citigroup's forecast for gold prices. Unlike oil prices, although 2024 is a year of outstanding performance for gold, the price of gold is still very bullish.

He said, "This year is a glorious year for gold. What I mean is, if you zoom in and look at the 50 year chart, you can see this bull market. This usually indicates that it is a fairly large bull market

Layton stated that the bank expects a strong bull market to continue. He said, "There are several reasons. One is that we have introduced a basic physical flow based gold valuation framework, which gives us some confidence in the potential driving factors of the bull market, including investments from central banks, wealthy off exchange investors, and more generally, investors who are concerned about high interest rates and debt levels in the United States

He added, "People have a lot of concerns, stock valuations are rising, and you're asking people to buy gold to hedge against the medium-term impact of the US economic slowdown. The US economy has been slowing down for two years and now it's been two and a half years, the labor market has been slowing down for two and a half years, and real interest rates are still near 15 year highs. People are worried about some of these things

Layton said, "Before these things disappear, there will be a large amount of gold investment buying as a hedge. Obviously, the central bank's gold purchases are for structural reasons, and these reasons will not disappear in the short term.