Après la débâcle surprise, à quand le rebond de l’or ?

Hello, welcome to a new episode of "It's worth the money", the show that gives meaning to your savings on Boursorama. Today, we're talking about gold, which is, for the moment, much less expensive. Hello, Benjamin. Hello, David. Benjamin Louvet, Director of Management and First Materials at Ofi Invest AM. The first semester was unexpected and very volatile for yellow metal. It wasn't a long, quiet river. We had a record of 5,595 dollars in the Ayr-Lens in six months.

and a 30% decline. That's not common. A 30% decline compared to the highest. Compared to the highest, of course. Because compared to the beginning of the year, we are in correction. We will say, at the maximum, we went to -10, between -10 and -15%.

It's not a good year. Let's remember that last year, the gold had made 60% of the progression. So we were maybe a little better for a correction. And then, for the volatility, David, we had talked about it at Offi Invest AM from the beginning of the year. We said the year will be more volatile. Why? Because one of the reasons that made the gold rise a lot last year and at the beginning of the year, I remind you that in January, the gold was at +20% before Kevin Warsh's nomination.

One of the reasons is the investors' will to diversify and to go further on gold in terms of exposure because we have a re-correlation of the stock market and the bond market. Traditionally, we say that an ideal portfolio is a portfolio that contains 60% of shares, 40% of bonds.

And as the actions and obligations now evolve in the same direction, this portfolio works less well. So there is a need for diversification elsewhere. Some great investors like Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, talked about the need to have 15% of gold in his portfolio. Mike Wilson, the investment director at Morgan Stanley, talks about 20%. So all that has brought a lot of money. So what are we actually at? A few percent? We are between 1 and 2% for private investors. At the level of investors, asset managers,

We estimate that we are around 2% to 2.5% with 39% of people who in the end of last declared that they had no position at all on gold. At the level of family offices, 72% of family offices say they have no exposure to gold at all. So we are really very far and the problem is that the gold market is a market that is much much smaller than the market of shares and bonds.

a shift of a little bit of the exposure on the shares and bonds towards the gold market Goldman Sachs in a study in December estimated that 1% of the shift of the shares and bonds markets towards the gold market would lead to a gold rise of 140% so that's what we knew in January and then afterwards we had all these geopolitical problems that weighed on the gold market. Yes but it was a surprise to see a 30% drop compared to 1.0, no one saw it coming

to lower them when hostilities in Iran start. Yes, it is true that this is a very surprising factor. But the impact of the conflict as seen by the markets is essentially an inflationary impact. We had a surge in gas prices, oil prices, and so investors saw an inflationary risk and at the same time a probably short war and therefore little impact on growth.

no impact on growth, inflation, that means that all investors have reviewed their monetary policy scenarios and have begun to consider several rates of interest from central banks. And that's not good for gold. That's not good for gold because gold is an asset that has no yield. When you buy an asset, whatever happens in terms of performance, you are paid to wait because you have a dividend. When you buy an obligation, you have a coupon. A building, you have a rent. When you buy gold, you have none of that. So when interest rates go up,

Traditionally, this increases the disadvantage of gold and therefore leads to a disinterest of investors. This is essentially what has been weighing on the gold exchange for the last few months. We can see that as soon as we talked about the end of the conflict, the gold exchanges went up again. And then as soon as Kevin Walsh said during his first committee as President of the US Federal Reserve that

The price will probably rise by the end of the year. Gold has been corrected. So we are really in a logic related to the price. But that's the short-term logic, David. In the long term, the problems that brought gold where it is today remain intact. That means that for you, the yellow metal has not lost its value-reference status.

Are these benefits? Is this a temporary disinterest? Yes, for me it is a temporary disinterest. If we look at the different investors on this market, there are three main forms. The first are the central banks.

Central banks continue to buy. In the first quarter, they bought 244 tons of gold. - Especially in China. - Since then, China continues to buy. It bought 10 tons in May, 16 tons in June. These were its biggest purchases since September 2023. Asians have this habit of operating against the flow of markets. They buy when the markets go down, if they have a conviction, and they sell when the markets go up. In Europe, we do the opposite. We buy when it goes up and we sell when it goes down.

So they take advantage of this opportunity. The Central Bank of Poland, which has long wanted to increase its gold reserves, took advantage of this drop to invest billions of dollars in gold. But it did not support the gold exchange rate. All these purchases of the Central Bank did not support the gold exchange rate. So they did not support the gold exchange rate because it is not on this side that we must look for. And it is not on this side either that we must look for the rest. Because the Central Banks, we have already talked about it, you know there is a survey that is published every year

by an organization called the World Gold Council, which is questioning the world's central banks to find out what their relationship is with gold. This report has just been published, it was published at the beginning of June, and in the questions they ask the central banks, there are 74 central banks to question, it's very representative, they ask them: "What do you want to do with gold in the next 12 months?" And to this question,

This year, we have a record of 45% of the central bank questioned who say they want to increase their allocation in the next 12 months. So this category of investors bought and will continue to buy. So the drop does not come from there. You have a second category of buyers, these are private investors through ETFs.

So, the exposition products. We had a correction and roughly speaking, the quantities invested in these products have decreased and we have returned to the level of investment where we were at the end of September 2025. So, we basically cancelled all the investors who had come in a little late to try to take advantage of a movement that has now lasted for several months and who, seeing the fragility of this market, may have decided to take their profits or to leave before losing too much money.

Where we have a real difference, it is on speculative investors, hedge funds, systematic management, where we had a return of position. These people were like everyone else, rather at the purchase, since the market was very high. They cut their position because the market turned around, because there were changes in anticipation on interest rates, because there were probably other opportunities.

on oil, other opportunities on raw materials. We have cocoa and coffee today that are moving a lot with Loïs Calminho, which is developing because there have also been big

and therefore you need money to be able to invest in these positions. And we sell obviously where it's profitable. Yes, and so they sold these positions and even beyond selling them, they became net sellers over time. And that today, from the information we have, they have a very important position in sales, so there is little chance of seeing them continue to sell. Benjamin, I note that we are talking about investors in the market,

to determine the course of gold at any time. Until now, we have talked about the needs for gold, the industry, the sectors, the jewellery, the jewellery. Why don't we talk about it? Because behind there are physical needs. Absolutely. It doesn't weigh today. So it weighs, but less and less. It should be known that about fifteen years ago, the jewellery market was about 60% of the gold demand.

Today, we are around 40%. Why? Because the investment share has increased a lot. Because gold is financed. Exactly. The industry is not really a subject because we use gold in your phone, in your computer. There is gold in my phone? Yes. It's worth gold. It's worth gold, indeed, but there is gold for certain contacts. We use specific gold properties, malleable, ductile.

and resistant to heat and conductors of electricity. In very small quantities. In very small quantities. As a result, the industry represents only 6 to 7% of the global demand for gold. So even if you have a big economic development or a big economic slowdown, the impact of the sector will be very light. Today, what makes the price of gold is the margin demand, the marginal demand and the marginal demand. It comes from the financial sector.

We think that with a 30% drop in the gold price compared to its high points, in the stock markets, we would be in a bear market. We have a feeling that there is a weight on the gold market and that the gold price could still drop and that this year will be a year of transition for gold.

I think the potential for a drop is quite limited today. There is still a potential for a drop if we had to stay for another month, month and a half, in levels that we currently have, because there could be a certain latitude of ETF holders and therefore a little more liquidation.

But central banks will continue to buy and investors, I said it, are already in maximum position at the sale, so they can no longer really rely on the market. So we can have this phenomenon of lassitude that can bring the costs a little lower. But structural problems, David, they are still there and they will resurface in an obvious way in the coming months as soon as this noise around this Iranian crisis on the markets will be

So it's an opportunity. For us it's clearly an opportunity. Why? Because the gold fund problem is global debt, which is today a record. I will resume the survey I was talking about earlier about central banks. There is another question that is asked to the central bank in this survey, it is why do you want to buy gold? And the two most common reasons given by central banks are: 1 because gold does not present any risk of counterparty.

Otherwise, it's the debt of a person. It tells you a lot about the perception that they may have of the other assets they have in their wallet, which are essentially state obligations. And the second reason why they say they want to buy gold, it's because they tell us that interest rates will stay low for a very long time. The central banks that fix

monetary policy, tell you that interest rates will remain low for a very long time. I don't know who better to believe. And if central banks say that, it's because, as the debt is very high, if we want this debt to remain sustainable, we have to keep very low rates. So I say, when we don't know, we listen to people who know. The people who know, for me, are the central banks. And the central banks, in another survey that was also done in June, during a forum that brings together all these institutions,

which was done by 74 institutions representing 18 billion in conservation. They were asked where they saw the gold price in a year, in June 2027, and central banks answered that they saw the gold price between 5,000 and 6,000 dollars.

- That's it. - That's it. - And Goldman Sachs sees a rebound of 20% in the second quarter of gold. - But for me, the "gold price" is very volatile. The raw materials are a price that is fixed by an immediate balance between supply and demand. So we can know this kind of volatility, we know it.

But for me, the history of gold is very clear. We know how long it will go up. We don't have the date. But gold will go up until we solve this debt problem. As long as the debt problem is not solved, we have to keep low rates to keep a sustainable debt. The day we will solve this debt problem, it will take the course of the very, very long time. We are not there yet.

We will have to forget about gold in investment for at least 20 years, but as long as we have not solved this debt problem, the gold exchange should behave well in our opinion. Thank you, signed explanation. Benjamin Louvain, Director of First Materials Management at Ofi Invest AM. Thank you Benjamin. Thank you David. And it's worth it. Come back next week, here at your home, on Boursorama.