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Gold bugs have been waiting for this moment. The precious metal touched $2,000 an ounce on Monday amid a wobbly banking sector, elevated inflation, and expectations of a 25 basis point rate hike (or none at all) at the next Fed meeting.
“When things get scary out there, investors run to safe havens, and gold is basically one of those major safe havens,” Gareth Soloway, chief market strategist at Inthemoneystocks.com and verifiedinvesting.com.
Gold futures (GC=F) are up 6% since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the closure of Signature Bank of New York spurred concerns of a banking contagion. Europe’s Credit Suisse debacle also sent investors into assets like bitcoin and precious metals.
“We have seen kind of a flee from the banking system,” said Soloway. “Money absolutely did move away into gold and that’s definitely one of those fear-factor trades that has helped gold go higher.”
“Recent price gains have likely sapped some of the support for a further rally, even though the Fed is likely closer to their peak interest rate and the U.S. dollar may weaken further,” Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Seattle told Yahoo Finance. “That said, the trend is likely to remain higher, especially as demand from Asia recovers as China reopens this year.”
While gold bulls see the precious metal going past its previous record high of $2,074.88 some time before the end of 2023, the real fireworks are expected next year.
“By 2024, I would actually say we’ll get well above $3,000, maybe $3500,” said Soloway, who expects prices to reach $2,100 by the end of this year. “2024 will be the big year for gold. That’s going to be the monster up year.”
The future also looks bright for mining stocks, he said. Those underperformed last year as the costs to mine rose, but prices for the underlying metal did not.
“We will see inflation that is somewhat lightly elevated, but it’s not going to be at the levels that it was over the last year or so, and with gold really starting to play catchup, the miners are going to do really well over the next couple of years,” said Soloway.
Ines is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @ines_ferre
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