As gold finishes up yet another down month, analysts are taking an increasingly bearish view on its price, with some predicting it could hit $1,000 or even $700 by year’s end.

A Bloomberg survey of analysts said the yellow metal will hit $984 before January. 

“Gold is out of fashion like flared trousers: no one wants it,” Robin Bhar, an analyst at Société Générale SA, told the news service. “It’s not going to collapse, but we think it is going to be at a lower level in the not-too-distant future.”

In fact, just about every analyst forecasts further drops: 

– In a research note, Bank of America predicted the price will hit $1,000 by this year, Reuters says.

“Gold prices are unlikely to rally into a [Federal Reserve] tightening cycle,” it said.

– Most analysts blamed both the U.S. central bank’s decision to tighten money and the strength of the U.S. dollar, which has dissuaded investors from diversifying into gold.

Goldman Sachs head of commodities research Jeffrey Currie told Bloomberg that he thinks the metal will fall in both the short and long term, predicting it will soon sink below $1,000 for the first time since the financial crisis.

–  Other analysts go further. Shaun Port, the chief investment officer at the online investment management company Nutmeg, told CNBC that he sees “further downside” and it may soon hit the “precrisis levels of $700 or $800.”

Ramin Nakisa, a global asset allocation specialist at UBS, added that gold’s continued weakness during the Greek fiscal crisis showed that people no longer view it as a haven during turmoil.

– One influential analyst, Claude Erb, who predicted the metal would change direction in 2012, estimated its current fair value at $825. But he told CNN it may sink to far lower than that, to $350, as “markets tend to overshoot.”

Gold is one of many commodities that has taken a hit lately. Platinum is currently trading lower than gold, below the $1,000 benchmark. Silver has also hit multiyear lows.

“We think we are in a structural bear market, not only in gold, but across the commodity complex,” said Currie. “The individual commodity stories are reinforcing one another, creating a negative-feedback loop.” 

Despite all the pessimistic predictions, at press time the spot price of gold had risen to $1,095 an ounce. Its price has fallen around 8 percent since the beginning of the year.

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