Gold hits record high, is a 'Goldilocks hedge': Analyst

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Gold (GC=F) futures hit record highs during intraday trading on Monday. IDX CIO Ben McMillan joins Josh Lipton and Madison Mills on Market Domination to discuss whether gold could go even higher.

Rate cuts, central banks buying gold, and geopolitical tensions are contributing to gold’s record climb, McMillan tells Yahoo Finance. “Gold's been very sleepy for many years, and all of a sudden, I think it's kind of hitting on all those cylinders.” He says gold has been a “Goldilocks hedge against a lot of different things out there, not the least of which is central banks buying among concerns about kind of global quantitative easing or fiscal deficits run amok.”

“Gold historically has been.... kind of associated with very risk-off, very flight to safety type trades like hard landing recessions. I think as we move forward, what we're seeing in the central bank buying is the best example of this…they're selling treasuries and buying gold. So they're opting for the currency that is not the US dollar base, and that can only go one way going forward.”

He explains, “That's not even necessarily a hard landing or a doomsday scenario. I think that's just a stark reality of where we are as it relates to global monetary supply and surplus, and that's [a] powerful tailwind going forward.”

McMillan expects hedge funds and institutional investors to buy gold, some through the Gold Miners ETF. He adds, “Miners historically have had higher volatility. Now that's not necessarily the case this year. And I think that reflects miners trading at kind of historical discounts relative to the price of gold, but going forward, as investors think about if you had to pick one, generally, people would favor bullion, gold, the metal, we like to diversify. We think that's a good bet. Generally, most investors would probably want to size gold miners a little bit smaller because they are riskier.”

Looking forward, McMillan says he “would be very surprised if gold hadn't set all-time highs 12 months from now. I'd be surprised if it was trading below, you know, $3,000 an ounce…we've got some powerful structural tailwinds in place for gold that aren't going to slow down anytime soon. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to be a straight line up and to the right. There's going to be volatility.”

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Market Domination.

This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.

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