A major publicly traded fund and mutual fund manager is discovering that winning gold trading isn’t talked about as much as artificial intelligence trading is – but maybe it should be.
VanEck CEO Jan van Eck thinks that the best investment this year is ‘hedging against political cycles’. For him, that means investing gold.
“It’s quietly the best-performing asset this year,” Van Eck told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” Monday from the Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach.
Gold reached another record on Friday, the 37th record this year. At market close on Friday, the stock has risen 28% since the beginning of the year.
Van Eck, whose firm is in charge of the VanEck Gold Miners ETFexpects foreign investments in precious metals to continue to boost the commodity. It should also help push gold miners higher, which has seen them lag behind the commodity this year. But from Friday the VanEck Gold Miners ETF is starting to outperform, up 31% this year.
“I think you own both, because if the miners catch up at all, it’s going to be ruined,” he said.
As for AI trading, Van Eck says it’s “amazing” how investors are refusing to give up on it.
“It’s as if part of the model portfolios, or core portfolios, is a tactical consideration versus the semis. And some of our largest clients have actually bought on the dip over the last two weeks,” VanEck CEO said.
Last month, his company launched the VanEck Fabless Semiconductor ETF. It is a companion of his VanEck Semiconductor ETF that excludes companies that run their own foundries, such as Intel.
FactSet reports the new ETF’s top holdings as Nvidia, Broadcom And Advanced micro devices from Friday.
“Why spend billions of dollars building the chips if you don’t have to?” said van Eck. “Nvidia does not build its own chips. So that’s a different kind of investment strategy.”
Since its launch on August 28, the VanEck Fables Semiconductor ETF is up half a percent.
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