The price of gold hit a six-month high last week—and now some forecasters predict the metal’s price will start to rise again.

Gold closed at $1,728 on Sept. 7. The metal hadn’t reached the $1,700 level since March—and for most of the year has been showing mostly flat growth.

Meanwhile, in a new update to its April gold forecast, Thomson Reuters GFMS said the fundamentals behind gold remain strong and that the metal could clear $1,800 by the end of 2012.

“I think we’re on pretty safe ground, saying that we’ve already seen the lows for the year and that firmer prices, particularly towards year-end, are on the cards,” said Philip Klapwijk, global head of metals analytics, in a statement. “We’ve recently seen how gold can react sharply to any prospect of more [qualitative easing] in the United States and we’re fairly confident that some form of easing is more likely than not in the end; we may have seen periodic items of good news on the U.S. economy but that invariably seems followed by bad, and this is all before a probable slowdown in both European and Chinese economic growth.”

JCK