Clients asking more about gold as yellow metal moves higher

investmentnews.com:

Take heed, advisors. The gold bugs are starting to come out.

The yellow metal may have receded slightly since hitting an all-time high last week of $2,195 per ounce. However, even at its current price of $2,167, gold is still up an impressive 5 percent year to date and 12.5 percent over the past 12 months.

While it’s not getting the same attention as bitcoin or NVDA due to their truly historic bull runs, the stealthy advance in gold is starting to attract more attention from clients, a number of advisors say. And some strategists believe this is only beginning.

“I have been getting questions about it lately,” said Eric Amzalag, CEO and founder of Peak Financial Planning. “For the most part, until the recent run-up, clients have actually pushed back at the inclusion of gold in their portfolio, which I have largely agreed with, because gold has underperformed the market and has not provided the hedge we are led to believe it will.”

Amzalag believes gold is being carried along with the overall market enthusiasm and is more of a “speculative” opportunistic asset similar to bitcoin rather than a safe haven uncorrelated to the market. As a result, he’s not adding gold to client portfolios.

“The time to do that would have been 9 months ago, and we are instead hedging risk in other ways,” he said.

Don’t give up on the shiny stuff just yet, especially with a series of rate cuts on the way, says George Milling-Stanley, chief gold strategist at State Street Global Advisors. The rate cuts may just not be arriving as fast as some investors expect, which will delay gold’s next leg higher a bit.

“The markets were looking for six rate cuts this year, starting this month,” he said. “We’ve now pushed that out to maybe June and maybe four,