Gold is getting its shine back.
The traditional safe-haven asset has rallied more than 3 percent this month, as investors sought shelter from a volatile stock market. The surge has even prompted praise from Mad Money’s Jim Cramer for gold’s “bull market.”
Market uncertainties such as trade tensions and other geopolitical worries tend to increase demand for safe-haven assets, gold being one of them. As trade war tensions have peaked over the last three months, gold prices have risen 6 percent.
And the rally could be just getting started, according to Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Jaffray.
“Cramer’s spot on correct,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Friday. “It looks like we’re putting in a bottom here and it looks like we’re going to see this maybe 9 to 10 percent higher to get back to the old highs.”
On the GLD gold index, a 10 percent rally would take the exchange-traded fund (ETF) to new 52-week highs. It would also mark its highest level since August 2016.
“From our perspective I think we could see some weakness in the dollar in here given that the [Federal Reserve] might be less hawkish going forward, and that might be really the underlying driver higher as to why we’ll see the gold prices go higher,” said Johnson.
The U.S. dollar and gold prices typically have an inverse relationship, in which one falls as the other rises. Bullion tends to get a bid when the greenback falls, as it becomes a cheaper commodity to investors trading in other currencies.
However, not every market watcher is as enthusiastic about the gold trade. Erin Gibbs, portfolio manager at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the gold rush may be fading.
“I don’t see it ending just yet, perhaps not before the end of the year but certainly as we get into 2019,” Gibbs said on “Trading Nation” on Friday. “A lot of the concerns that we have – tariffs, Brexit and so on – as those dissipate and we really start looking at the fundamentals again, this could very swiftly be undone.”
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