Gold and silver prices soared to new highs on Monday.
Gold was last seen at a record $4,445.8 per ounce while spot gold was last trading at $4,414.99. Prices are up nearly 70% since the start of the year.
The metal has soared this year, smashing consecutive price records as risk assets lost ground. Gold is typically viewed as a safe haven asset in times of economic or geopolitical turbulence.
Silver typically tracks gold, and was last seen at a record $68.96 per ounce while spot silver was last trading at $68.98. Prices have gained 128% since the start of the year.
Stateside, U.S.-listed shares of gold miners and silver miners ticked up in premarket trading. The iShares MSCI Global Gold Miners ETF was last seen almost 2.7% higher.
While markets received their much-expected interest rate cut by the Fed on Dec. 10, and optimism returned to AI stocks in the previous trading session, economic speculation for next year likely put global investors back on the defensive as they seek to balance their portfolios.
Due to outsized fiscal deficits in the U.S., U.K., Europe, and increasingly Japan and China, “the monetary value of gold has arguably reemerged,” according to Matthew McLennan, head of global value team at First Eagle Investments.
“The value of gold as a monetary potential hedge has reemerged,” McLennan told CNBC’s “The Exchange” on Dec. 17. “Gold went from being depressed relative to the nominal assets that you would want to use as a potential hedge against it, to more rationally valued. And I think the other precious metal complexes followed it higher with some leverage.”
Investors will also be watching the race for the nomination of the next chair of the Federal Reserve, with the central bank’s independence and credibility in question following repeated pressure from U.S. President Trump on existing chair Jerome Powell.
“What we’re quite focused on here is the long term fiscal credibility of the United States, because I think that is the condition precept for having an independent Fed and for having a rational chair,” McLennan added.
He also has his eye on wage inflation. “So really what’s going to matter going forward is a function of whether job openings, which have inflected higher recently, whether they follow corporate earnings higher,” he said.