Gold’s 5% hedge role: allocation and bullion formats explained for miners
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Gold’s surge to a new record above US$5,100/oz, up 15% year-to-date and extending its strongest run since 1979, is being framed by investor Kevin O’Leary as validation of gold as a permanent 5% portfolio hedge rather than a trade. O’Leary stresses holding physical bullion in 100 g and 1 kg bars with paid vault storage, supplemented by coins for liquidity, and rebalancing the position quarterly. He argues institutional investors such as sovereign wealth and pension funds typically hold 5–19% in gold, while compliance rules still keep most of them out of cryptocurrencies.
Technical Brief
- O’Leary specifies physical bullion formats as 100 g and 1 kg bars for core holdings.
- A separate tranche in coins is maintained explicitly for portability and transaction liquidity.
- He treats part of the bar inventory as effectively non-discretionary, stating he “never sells those”.
- Gold’s current move is framed as a “wait a decade” payoff, not a trading cycle.
- Bullion’s 15% year-to-date gain continues what he calls the strongest annual run since 1979.
- Spot gold recently exceeded US$5,100/oz, setting a new nominal price record.
- O’Leary cites Norway and US sovereign wealth and pension funds as examples constrained from crypto.
- He notes institutional gold exposure bands from 5% up to roughly 19% under existing mandates.
Our Take
Across the 746 Mining stories in our database, only a handful treat gold primarily as a portfolio-hedging tool rather than a mine-development or price-speculation theme, so this 5% allocation framing is relatively unusual in coverage aimed at project operators.
The 15% bullion_price_increase_ytd noted here contrasts with several gold-asset project pieces in our coverage where economics are still being stress-tested at more conservative long-term prices, suggesting developers are not yet baking current spot strength fully into feasibility assumptions.
Institutional_gold_allocation bands of 5–19% imply that even modest shifts in large North American and European funds’ weighting to gold can translate into sizeable, relatively price-insensitive demand for bullion, which tends to support longer-term offtake confidence for primary gold producers in Canada and the US.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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