This was not as much of a surprise as it might have seemed, as three European central banks, those of Germany, France and Italy, with the US, together hold more than half the world's central bank stocks of gold, and those four have always made it plain that they don't intend to sell bullion. The real surprise was that the European central banks said they would no longer provide any extra bullion for the hedging market. With less bullion available to hedgers, the cost of borrowing gold to sell forward is going to be higher. Producers who want to hedge forward and speculators who have been pursuing a similar strategy in expectation of profits from a falling gold price are faced with having to pay more. It looks as if fundamentals in the market have at last changed.
Gold prices are likely to trend upwards for the foreseeable future.