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‘Exploring for critical elements and precious metals in New Brunswick, Canada.’
Spot gold and silver advanced late in Monday’s U.S. session, supported by a softer dollar and cooling expectations for further Federal Reserve rate hikes. Spot gold traded at $4,414.30 an ounce, up 0.88%, while spot silver rose 1.66% to $65.650 an ounce. U.S. equities closed lower and European stocks weakened as a rebound in crude oil renewed inflation concerns and pushed Treasury yields higher, though the weaker dollar and reduced rate-hike bets continued to underpin bullion.
Attention centered on remarks from Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equity strategist and chief investment officer, Mike Wilson. In a Bloomberg TV interview on Friday, Wilson said gold has been in a bull market for 25 years. He noted that in 2022 stocks and bonds fell together, causing traditional 60/40 portfolios to lose on both the defensive and offensive sides—a rare outcome over recent decades. With equity and bond correlations rising and fixed income offering less protection, investors need other ways to strengthen the defensive portion of their portfolios.
Wilson said Morgan Stanley has long viewed gold as a defensive asset rather than a yielding instrument. He suggested investors could reduce duration in fixed income holdings while preserving diversification benefits and limiting interest-rate risk. The rise in gold, he argued, is not a short-term speculative move but part of a long-term trend that many investors only began to recognize earlier this year, even though the bull market has already lasted a quarter century.
Looking at 2026, Wilson described a broad commodity rotation, with gold, silver, rare earths, energy and semiconductor-related assets drawing attention. The common thread, he said, is that investors are seeking commodity-like assets that can hedge equity risk and offer lower correlation to stocks when traditional stock-bond portfolios fail.
Still, Morgan Stanley commodity strategists have previously cautioned that without a meaningful recovery in gold ETF inflows, the metal will struggle to reach the firm’s $5,200-an-ounce target for the second half of 2026. The Federal Reserve’s July meeting minutes and Friday’s PMI data are seen as the next key catalysts for rate expectations and gold prices.
