When global economic conditions become uncertain or unpredictable, investors often flock to gold. According to Trading Economics, the yellow metal is currently trading above $3,200 per ounce, up 25% for the year and near the high end of its five-year range of $1,660-$3,325. Essentially, gold has been on an upward arc since the start of the pandemic. During the first phase of the unanticipated global health crisis, the spot price for an ounce of gold jumped 33% in six months and broke through the $2,000 level. Gold also spiked in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine. Over the past year, gold has jumped another 40%, driven in part by global uncertainty over tariffs and trade wars. The current price of gold reflects the perceived safety of hard assets amid the global conflicts, as well as expectations for lower U.S. interest rates, which tend to weaken the dollar (the currency in which gold is priced). The outlook for Federal Reserve rate cuts also helps gold, as lower rates reduce the risk for a global economic recession and thus a potential decline in gold purchased for jewelry. Looking ahead, our forecast trading range for gold in 2025 is $2,500-$3,500 and our average price forecast for the year is $3,000. This compares to average gold prices of $2,450 in 2024, $1,960 in 2023, $1,873 in 2022, $1,806 in 2021, $1781 in 2020, $1,400 in 2019, $1,265 in 2018, $1,277 in 2017, $1,258 in 2016, and $1,155 in 2015. As long as geopolitics are flaring and the global economy is wobbling, gold is likely to remain at elevated levels.

Advanced Micro Devices designs a variety of digital semiconductors for markets such as PCs, gaming consoles, data centers, industrial, and automotive applications. AMD’s traditional strength was in central processing units and graphics processing units used in PCs and data centers. Additionally, the firm supplies the chips found in prominent game consoles such as the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox. In 2022, the firm acquired field-programmable gate array leader Xilinx to diversify its business and augment its opportunities in key end markets such as data center and automotive.

Newmont is the world's largest gold miner. It bought Goldcorp in 2019, combined its Nevada mines in a joint venture with competitor Barrick later that year, and also purchased competitor Newcrest in November 2023. Its portfolio includes 17 wholly or majority owned mines and interests in two joint ventures in the Americas, Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea. The company is expected to sell roughly 5.6 million ounces of gold in 2025 from its core mines after selling six higher-cost, smaller mines. Newmont also produces material amounts of copper, silver, zinc, and lead as byproducts. It had about two decades of gold reserves along with significant byproduct reserves at the end of December 2024.

Nvidia is a leading developer of graphics processing units. Traditionally, GPUs were used to enhance the experience on computing platforms, most notably in gaming applications on PCs. GPU use cases have since emerged as important semiconductors used in artificial intelligence. Nvidia not only offers AI GPUs, but also a software platform, Cuda, used for AI model development and training. Nvidia is also expanding its data center networking solutions, helping to tie GPUs together to handle complex workloads.