Gold has glittered thus far in 2025, rising 60% YTD, and financial advisors expect the yellow metal – and even less precious metals like silver – to shine again in 2026.
Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at OnePoint BFG, for one, remains bullish on gold notwithstanding its strong 2025 performance. In his view, the strong underpinning of robust central bank buying should continue and there is still a lot of pent up demand from the western world.
“Helping too should be Federal Reserve rate cuts and the likelihood, we believe, of a lower US dollar,” Boockvar added.
Boockvar is also long silver, up a sparkling 99% YTD, platinum, up 80% YTD, and copper, up 34% YTD, which he owns indirectly via gold mining holdings that also have copper projects. Silver and platinum in particular should benefit from supply and demand characteristics that should continue in 2026, according to Boockvar.
He is less bullish on copper, however, because about half of the demand for it comes from China where demand is slowing due to stress in their property sector.
Anshul Sharma, chief investment officer at Savvy Wealth, meanwhile, says gold’s surge this year reflected a mix of elevated geopolitical risk, steady real yields, and record central bank buying. Looking ahead, he believes the backdrop in 2026 remains constructive as the economy moderates but continues to expand, the Fed begins easing, and the dollar softens.
“The scale of 2025’s rally will be hard to repeat given elevated positioning and what we believe will be a less urgent macro setup. We think gold can still deliver positive returns, but expectations should be more measured,” Sharma said.
While Sharma does track the broader complex, he says the “drivers differ sharply across metals.” He points out that silver moves with gold but with more volatility; platinum and palladium remain tied to auto demand; and copper is the most strategically important given electrification and AI-driven power needs. Uranium and rare earths have compelling long-term dynamics but come with concentrated, policy-sensitive supply chains in his opinion.
“For most investors, we think diversified equity or equity-linked exposures are often a more practical way to capture long-term structural trends tied to metals like copper, uranium, or rare earths,” Sharma said.
Moving on, Nolan Mauk, investment research analyst at Orion is staying constructive on gold in 2026. Even though “short-term price reversion is a possibility,” he believes several of its structural tailwinds show no signs of slowing down. For example, he says U.S. “money printing” has been positively correlated with gold over the past decade, and M2 growth is now once again at pre-pandemic levels and accelerating after bottoming in 2022. He adds that foreign central banks’ appetites for gold also remain robust, as some countries are looking to reduce their reliance on the dollar.
“These banks have been net buyers of gold for years, but have more than doubled their purchasing activity in the past three years compared to the prior decade. For the first time since 1996, foreign central banks hold more gold than Treasuries as a percentage of their foreign reserves,” Mauk said.
TOO MUCH GOLD? REALLY?
When deciding how much gold to hold in client portfolios, Boockvar reasons that “there are times to have exposure to precious metals and other commodities and there are times not to.” And he believes now is the time to own them, still.
“It’s a great diversifier but we don’t own them for diversification sake but because we believe they are going higher in price,” Boockvar said.
Sharma, meanwhile, believes precious metals are best used as a risk-management tool rather than a core return driver. Gold provides diversification against macro uncertainty and currency volatility, and he sizes it modestly given its lack of income and mixed long-term real returns.
For industrial metals, Sharma believes the cleaner implementation is through broader themes such as electrification, infrastructure, and rising power demand linked to AI, rather than direct metals exposure.
“In our view, metals add resiliency and optionality to a traditional diversified portfolio,” Sharma said.
Finally, Orion’s Mauk wars that it’s important to size gold positions with care due to its volatility, sporting a 17% annualized standard deviation since 2004. He generally views a range of 0% to 5% as a reasonable allocation to capture the potential benefits of gold without overexposing a portfolio to idiosyncratic risks from the gold allocation.
“Historically, gold has a very low correlation to both stocks and bonds, meaning that diversification benefits can be achieved with focused allocations and can offer a differentiated source of return to a stock-bond portfolio,” Mauk said.