Name: Gold to stay at record levels, says Wincrests Bernard
Uploaded: 2025-12-30T19:02:06.584Z
Duration: 4 min 31 s
Description: Gold will stay near record highs because investors see the metal as an asset portfolio rather than just a hedge, says Barbara Ann Bernard of Wincrest Capital.

Gold will stay near record highs because investors see the metal as an asset portfolio rather than just a hedge, says Barbara Ann Bernard of Wincrest Capital.

Gold prices are expected to remain at record levels, according to Wincrest's Bernard, who notes a significant shift in central bank strategy from selling to buying gold and moving away from US dollars. Increased interest in gold as a portfolio asset, along with institutional purchases and regulatory approvals for gold and silver ETFs, are supporting these highs.

While some metals like nickel have underperformed, platinum group metals (PGMs) such as palladium and rhodium are seeing renewed value due to sustained demand from hybrid vehicles. Copper is also highlighted for its importance in data center construction and its rising price, with expectations of increased mergers and acquisitions in the copper sector as mining companies seek growth opportunities.

Gold to stay at record levels, says Wincrest's Bernard

I'm looking at some of the, you know, my GLCO screen on the Bloomberg terminal, the global commodities, just ripping on the metals, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, what do we do in 26 on that kind of front there? Cause that's tough comps to say the least. Yeah, so I think on the gold, it makes me smile. My very first internship with Sir John Templeton, I was 15 years old, he was 19 and he asked me one question, what was the intrinsic value of an ounce of gold? And at that time, it took me all summer to figure it out. I don't remember the number I gave him, but I do remember the conclusion was the central banks were all dumping gold and they were buying US dollars. Today, the opposite is true, right? You have central banks buying gold and dumping US dollars. So I think gold will continue to hold these highs. There's a lot more interest in gold as a portfolio asset rather than just in hedge. You have people like Tether buying gold. The India pension regulator just approved for the purchase of gold and silver ETFs. And so you also have gold and silver being supported by a weakening US dollar. So although there are uptime highs, I don't see them collapsing anytime soon. I think this movement will be sustained. And then not all metals have done well, like nickel, for example, hasn't. And where I think there's value to be had still in the metal space is in the PGMs. Trump has really squashed the hopes for the EV car, but what is clear is the hybrid is here to stay. And the hybrid still has a catalytic converter. But the PGMs were sort of left for dead. So this year they've started catching a bit and that's the palladium, the rhodium. And I think that continues. So I think there's still value to be had in PGMs and there are a lot of South African stocks that you can express that in. We own a small one in Australia called Southern Palladium, which has been on a tear recently. So there's still opportunity within the metals complex. I just think you have to be selective here. Yeah, we see, I'm looking at the BCOM index, the Bloomberg Commodities Index has had an incredible year of 13.6% thus far. That's the best year that we've seen since, well, basically in 22, we matched that. In 21, that was off the charts because of the pandemic. But Barbara Ann, do you look at the AI craze? I note, by the way, the palladium comment, and I love that because I care about the cars. But I was listening to Paul and Alexis this morning talking about silver and copper. And I can't remember who the guest was, but he or she was saying, look, this is the stuff you need to build data centers. And I don't know why I hadn't thought about Dr. Copper in that sense. I always, because of when I came into this business, think about China. But do you look at the stuff you need to build these data centers and you think there's still room to run in those commodities? Yeah, absolutely. So copper's had a great year because of the anticipated US tariff. So people have just been front, loading their orders, et cetera. But also a lot of the mines have had disruptions due to fatalities, which has brought supply offline. But the major thing is, globally 450 is sort of the break, 450 per pound is the break even for copper miners. And at 550, you start getting a really nice return on equity. So that incentivizes people to go out and invest in copper mines. But what it doesn't solve is that it takes 20 years to bring a copper mine to market. So where I think there's still opportunity on the copper side is in M&A. And I anticipate that will pick up. And so if you're a major and you wanna accelerate your growth at this point, you're gonna go out and buy smaller companies that are close to FID. So you don't have all the permitting risks, right? And so we have found one in Ecuador, tier one mine with a 20 to 30 year span here. And it has all the capital it needs to get to FID. It has no major off takers and no major on the share registers wide open, it's named Solaris. We think it's a beautiful candidate. And even though the price takeover candidate, and even though the price moved from 330 to 11, it's even more attractive today than it was a year ago, because the price of copper is higher and because the majors are highly incented to go out and buy this growth. So I think 2026 is the year that you see a lot of M&A pick up in the copper space in particular.

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