Gold is enjoying a great start to 2014, hitting a three-month high on Tuesday as it notches its first five-day win streak since August. But Credit Suisse's gold expert cautions against overstating the significance of the move.

In fact, he says that if the economy gets through its recent "soggy patch," gold could fall all the way to $1,000 this year.

"The fund flows that we've seen so far this year have been more short covering than new money coming in and adding to longs," said Credit Suisse's head of precious metals research, Tom Kendall, on Tuesday's episode of "Futures Now."

"I wouldn't be surprised if we see it trade up a little bit above $1,300 in the next couple of sessions," but "I think the momentum that we're seeing here is probably looking to exhaust itself in the not-too-distant future."

(Read more: Gold ends near 3-month high after Yellen remarks)

Kendall says it's about to get much, much worse for the precious metal.

"I think it's realistic to think of gold having a test of the $1,000 level at some point this year," Kendall said. "Now that's going to take well into the second half of the year, perhaps right toward the back end of Q4, before we can start thinking of gold going down to that kind of area. But that's not out of the realm of possibility by any stretch of the imagination, particularly once we get through this soft patch in the U.S. economy and we see real interest rates tick back up."

It's a bold call—gold has not touched $1,000 per troy ounce since the fall of 2009. But to the analyst's credit, Kendall's recent calls on gold now look prescient.

In a "Futures Now" appearance in February 2013, Kendall warned that improving economic fundamentals would remove the need for fund managers to hold on to gold as a hedge or safe-haven asset. That was before gold lost nearly a quarter of its value between the end of March and the beginning of July.

(Read more: Prepare for a gold 'moonshot': Peter Schiff)

And for Kendall, the soaring stocks and rising bond yields that dogged gold in 2013 will continue to nip at its heels in the 2014.

If the 10-year yield reverses its 2014 trend and rises to 2.80 percent or so, "it's going to become more of a struggle for gold to keep going up—particularly if the equity market's going to be on the boost again," Kendall said.

—By CNBC's Alex Rosenberg. Follow him on Twitter: @CNBCAlex.

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