Investor appetite for gold has the potential to double prices of the metal, says JPMorgan.
For those weary of the AI debate, gold’s dramatic swoon this week has at least changed the discussion.
Since its biggest one-day drop in over a decade on Tuesday, the debate has surrounded whether gold will regroup and push higher. Goldman Sachs, for one, is sticking to its end-2026 target of $4,900 per ounce, and sees upside risks from central bank as well as institutional investor demand.
“The speed of recent ETF inflows and client feedback suggest many long-term capital allocators – including sovereign-wealth funds, central banks, pension funds, and both private wealth and asset managers – are planning to increase their exposure to gold as a strategic portfolio diversifier,” said analysts Lina Thomas and Daan Struyven, said in a note.
That segues into our call of the day from JPMorgan strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, whose team says the price of gold could more than double in three years, as investors increasingly use it to hedge equities.
Firstly, Panigirtzoglou and his colleagues blame the metal’s recent tumble on trend-following commodity trading advisers taking profit on gold futures contracts, rather than retail investors exiting gold ETF exposures. Gold futures (GC00) have soared 56% this year.
“If this assessment is correct and retail investors were not behind [Tuesday’s] gold correction, then it is likely that their buying of gold ETFs has been less motivated by momentum and more driven by other factors,” they said.
The strategists do not believe all of that buying can be explained by this year’s popular debasement trade, which has seen investors turn to gold due to worries of a weakening dollar.
“What the ‘debasement trade’ does not traditionally encompass is the motivation to hedge equity exposures. And this motivation to hedge equity exposures has been more visible this year as retail investors bought equities and gold simultaneously and shunned longer-dated bonds, i.e. their traditional asset to hedge equity risk,” said Panigirtzoglou and his team.
While retail investors flocked to those bonds in 2023 and most of 2024, likely as a hedge against rising stock prices, they haven’t done the same this year, even though equities continue to climb, said the strategists. Instead, as their chart shows, gold has been the draw:
The strategists calculate that nonbank investors globally have boosted their allocation to gold to 2.6% of holdings. They arrive at this number by dividing $6.6 trillion of private investor gold holdings excluding central banks by the total stock of equities, bonds, cash and gold held outside banks. Should their theory that investors have replaced gold with bonds to hedge equity exposures prove correct, then that 2.6% allocation is probably too low, they say.
Another factor driving investors toward gold and away from those longer-dated bonds concerns the investor experience post Liberation Day, when President Donald Trump announced tariff rates he quickly scaled back. As stocks sharply corrected, longer-dated bonds also suffered, which became a problem for strategies that use those bonds as a way to hedge equity risk, said the JPMorgan team.
They calculate, using ETFs as a proxy, that around a tenth of the 20% allocation to bonds is in longer-dated bond funds. If that 2% allocation to those bonds were to be replaced by gold, the overall allocation would rise to 4.6%, implying a near doubling of gold prices factoring in other financial assets.
To be more exact, Panigirtzoglou and his team assume equity prices grow enough in the next three years that equity allocations rise to 54.6%, the previous peak of the dot-com bubble era. They also factor in a projected $7 trillion per year expansion of bonds and cash in the next three years. With both in mind, “the gold price would have to rise by 110% for the gold allocation to increase from 2.6% currently to 4.6% by 2028,” said the JPMorgan team.
Read: Here’s a theory about why gold suffered its biggest one-day fall in more than 10 years, and it’s linked to the U.S. economy
The markets
U.S. stocks SPX DJIA COMP have opened little changed, with investors watching earnings news and weighing some disappointment on that front. Oil (CL00) has climbed above $61/barrel after U.S. sanctioned two major Russian oil exporters. Gold (GC00) and silver (SI00) are climbing.
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The buzz
Tesla shares (TSLA) are falling after revenue beat, but earnings disappointed. CEO Elon Musk closed out the call asking investors to vote in favor of his $1 trillion compensation package.
IBM shares (IBM) are down on concerns over growth in its software business.
Dow (DOW) beat low expectations and shares of the commodity chemicals group are climbing.
American Airlines (AAL) delivered a better-than-expected forecast thanks to its upscale services and shares are up.
Honeywell stock (HON) is rising after the industrial conglomerate posted higher sales and lifted earnings guidance as its split plans go ahead.
Molina Healthcare (MOH) cut full-year guidance after the healthcare provider’s underperformance in its marketplace hit sales.
Results from Intel (INTC) and Ford (F) results are due after the close.
Quantum stocks soared after the Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration is considering making investments in the space.
Existing-home sales for September are due at 10 a.m. Fed governor Michael Barr will make another appearance, at 10:25 a.m.
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The chart
Yardeni Research offers a chart showing a bubble for Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF ARKK during 2020, that burst the next two years “without causing any collateral damage,” and since April has been doing fine. It’s part of a bone Yardeni has to pick with talk over an “everything bubble” that will soon pop. Rising margin debt this summer, SPACs in 2021, bitcoin in 2022 were all bubbly but no global collapse ensued, the firm says.
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Top tickers
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