Gold Price Reaches New All-time High, Experts Say it's Not Done

Next stop for gold — US$2,500 and beyond?

Gold has US$2,500 clearly in sight, but what does its price trajectory look like once it gets there?

Despite its historic run, many market participants believe the yellow metal still has further to go.

Lobo Tiggre, CEO of IndependentSpeculator.com, said he was optimistic about gold's prospects heading into 2024, but its price increase has come without the factors that made him bullish.

"The global macro context ... is extremely bullish for gold, and that's still ahead of us. That's still — the catalysts that I was expecting to bring gold to where we are now haven't happened yet. So starting from where we are now instead of US$2,000 I think makes it — it embarrasses me to put numbers on it, but it's a very positive direction for gold," he told the Investing News Network (INN) at the Rule Symposium, held last week in Boca Raton, Florida.

Opinions vary widely about exactly how positive the direction may be for gold during this bull market, but Brien Lundin, editor of Gold Newsletter, shared his forecast with INN at the same event.

"I think clearing US$2,400 for good — trading a few weeks above that level would be key," he said. "Eventually I think we're going to go much higher. The timing of that is always the hard part. Getting back to where I think we're going to be at the end of this cycle, I think the gold price is going to be somewhere between US$6,000 and US$8,000."

When will gold stocks finally move?

With the gold price historically high, market participants are hoping gold equities are next.

While the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (ARCA:GDX) and the VanEck Junior Gold Miners ETF (ARCA:GDXJ) are respectively up about 28 percent and 32 percent year-to-date, those increases haven't overshot gold's rise by much. Investors typically use gold stocks to get leverage on the gold price, meaning they are seeking much larger gains.

Many experts believe generalist investors will become interested in gold stocks when gold miners start to release their second quarter results in the next month or so. Gold's 2024 price rise kicked off in earnest in Q2, meaning that it's the first quarter where companies will see the increase reflected on their balance sheets.

"I think we have an exceptionally rare and very, very attractive opportunity in the gold stocks," Adrian Day, president of Adrian Day Asset Management, told INN on the sidelines of the Rule Symposium.

"I think when companies start to report their second quarter earnings later this month, we're going to start to see some very attractive cashflow numbers — better than the first quarter and better than the year-ago comparisons," he explained in a conversation with INN. "I've got to think that investors, when they see two back-to-back quarters of strong cashflow numbers, are going to start to look at these companies."