Samer Choucair: Gold Is Shifting from “Price Panic” to a “Monetary Function”
Investment leader Samer Choucair said some of the world’s largest asset managers, whose institutions collectively oversee approximately $27 trillion, have returned to buying gold following its retreat from record highs, reinforcing the view that the recent correction has not fundamentally broken the institutional investment case for the metal.
According to Choucair, none of the major managers highlighted in the current institutional positioning debate has abandoned the gold thesis. Some have rebuilt positions following the correction, while others have maintained or increased strategic allocations.
Samer Choucair said Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, has been buying gold while expecting the metal to return toward $5,000 an ounce by year-end. Pictet, Robeco, and Fidelity International have also increased exposure, while BNP Paribas Asset Management and Manulife John Hancock have either rebuilt positions or maintained a bullish allocation.
For Choucair, the significance of these moves lies less in a single price target than in what they reveal about institutional behavior: major investors are increasingly treating corrections in gold as opportunities to rebalance strategic exposure rather than as signals that the long-term investment thesis has ended.
Sticky Inflation and a More Hawkish Rate Environment
Samer Choucair said gold delivered an exceptional rally in 2025, supported by retail and institutional inflows as well as sustained central-bank purchases, before entering a correction as investors repriced the outlook for U.S. monetary policy.
U.S. inflation has remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% objective, while a more hawkish monetary-policy outlook has increased market sensitivity to Treasury yields and the possibility that interest rates could remain higher for longer.
Choucair said rising Treasury yields and expectations of tighter monetary conditions increase the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset such as gold. As a result, any attempt by the metal to break decisively through levels around $4,600 an ounce may not necessarily be smooth or linear.
The key question for investors, he said, is no longer simply whether inflation remains elevated, but whether real yields rise sufficiently to challenge the strategic demand that has been building beneath the gold market.
From “Price Panic” to a “Monetary Function”
Samer Choucair said the market is moving from pricing what he describes as “price panic” toward pricing gold’s “monetary function.”
In his view, the correction has not invalidated the investment thesis. Instead, it has reconnected gold to three variables that matter particularly to institutional investors: real yields, the persistence of central-bank purchases, and fiscal uncertainty across developed economies.
This distinction is important because it changes the way investors interpret volatility.
If gold is treated primarily as a momentum asset, a sharp correction can appear to signal the end of a rally. But if it is viewed as a monetary and sovereign hedge, periods of weakness can instead become opportunities to restore portfolio allocations.
Choucair said gold therefore continues to function more as a strategic sovereign hedge than as a pure momentum trade, particularly while uncertainty remains over the future direction of U.S. interest rates.
Institutional Investors Are Rebuilding Positions
Choucair said institutional positioning provides further evidence that the correction has not eliminated demand.
Net long positions held by futures funds rose to their highest level since the beginning of the year in the week ending August 25, while flows into gold exchange-traded funds remained geographically uneven.
North America experienced greater pressure, while parts of Asia and Europe demonstrated comparatively stronger resilience or positive flows.
According to Samer Choucair, weaker U.S. investment flows should not automatically be interpreted as a collapse in structural demand as long as the official sector remains a net buyer.
The broader institutional argument is that gold is increasingly moving from being considered an optional portfolio hedge toward becoming a more permanent component of diversified asset allocation.
That shift matters because it could make future demand less dependent on short-term price momentum and more connected to strategic portfolio construction.
The Gulf: Hedging Does Not Compete with Growth
Samer Choucair said gold can serve several functions for Gulf investors without competing with the region’s broader economic-growth agenda.
It can provide a hedge against purchasing-power erosion, diversify reserves and portfolios away from excessive concentration in fixed income, and improve capital-allocation resilience alongside the development of Saudi Vision 2030 and the continued expansion of the Saudi capital market.
But Choucair stressed that gold should not be viewed as a substitute for productive investment.
It does not replace manufacturing, logistics, the digital economy, tourism, healthcare, infrastructure, or technology. Instead, it performs a different portfolio function.
Gold and other real assets can help manage balance-sheet risk, while private equity, infrastructure, technology, manufacturing, and listed equities remain instruments for creating economic value and capturing growth.
For institutional allocators, Choucair said separating these two functions is essential: hedging protects capital, while productive assets compound it.
Risks and Opportunities
Choucair cautioned that further interest-rate increases or a sustained rise in real yields could slow gold’s advance.
Geopolitically driven increases in energy prices could also complicate the outlook by keeping inflation elevated and forcing the Federal Reserve to maintain tighter monetary conditions for longer than markets currently expect.
Another risk is behavioral concentration. If too many investors build positions around the same macroeconomic thesis, an abrupt change in monetary policy could produce a sharper correction as portfolios rebalance simultaneously.
At the same time, Choucair sees opportunities across gold ETFs, lower-cost mining producers, and multi-asset hedging strategies, particularly as institutional investors continue reassessing the traditional 60/40 portfolio framework following successive cycles of inflation, higher interest rates, and elevated sovereign debt.
An Institutional Repositioning
Samer Choucair concluded that the defining gold story of 2026 is not necessarily a guaranteed price explosion, but an institutional repositioning following the correction.
Amundi’s $5,000-an-ounce target should not be interpreted as a universal market consensus, he said. The more important issue for institutional investors is the quality of portfolio governance rather than the precision of any individual price forecast.
The strategic discipline, according to Choucair, is straightforward: gold should be accumulated during periods of weakness and rebalanced within a defined long-term allocation range rather than chased after sharp rallies.
For Samer Choucair, that represents the deeper transformation taking place in the gold market. The metal is increasingly being evaluated not simply by how high its price can rise, but by the monetary, sovereign, and portfolio function it can perform when traditional financial assets face simultaneous pressure.