By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Gold prices are rising up more than 2% today, spurred on by weakness in the US dollar as investors consider the next step in tariff negotiations and the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting this week. My next guest is here to address why gold is so appealing right now. Joining me now on set, we’ve got Chris Mancini, who’s the Gabelli Funds associate portfolio manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund. Great to have you here with us. Just take us into what you’ve been analyzing in terms of the correlation and the price action that we’ve seen in gold in the early months in 2025 thus far.
00:50 Chris Mancini
Yeah, I mean, I think what we’ve seen so far is that, um, is that the big deal is that, uh, we’ve had gold has, um, so with gold, the big thing that happened was when Russia’s reserves, uh, were actually confiscated. And, and that was the biggest deal. That happened, uh, way back in, in 2021 when, when, uh, when, when Russia attacked Ukraine. But what’s happened this year so far is with the tariffs happening, um, the big situation is that the world’s trying to kind of recalibrate whether or not they want to hold dollars, um, and they, whether they want dollars to be the global reserve currency. And so, um, as they’re assessing other options, and specifically China’s assessing options, they’re considering what that, that could be, and gold really is the only other alternative.
02:11 Speaker A
So what is the smartest way to play gold in your portfolio right now? Is it holding physical gold? Is it holding gold ETFs or miners of gold? What’s your assessment?
02:24 Chris Mancini
Um, well, we think that owning the miners right now is the best way to do it because the miners are really cheap. So what’s happened is that the price of gold has gone from around, uh, $2,000 an ounce up to like $3,300 an ounce today. And the miners haven’t moved as much as the price of gold. The miners right now are generating lots of free cash flow. They’re paying dividends, and more importantly, they’re buying back lots of stock because their stocks really are so cheap. So we think that that’s the way to do it.
03:02 Speaker A
And so with those gold miners in mind here, where and who is the top player, the top pick, if you will, even among the miners that are publicly traded?
03:14 Chris Mancini
So we like, um, Newmont is the biggest publicly traded company right now. It’s very cheap. It did a deal with, um, it acquired Newcrest, which is a big Australian company. Um, it’s the biggest gold miner miner in the world. That deal didn’t go as well as they had planned. There were some integration issues. We think that those are mostly behind the company now, and we think that it’ll start, it’s buying back lots of stock. You know, do very well going forward.
03:49 Speaker A
Even as we think about the run-up, a lot of investors are going to ask, is it too late to get into the gold trade right now?
04:02 Chris Mancini
Right. I, I don’t think so. I mean, I think what I like to say is that the path of least resistance is up. So specifically, really with China right now. China owns, as I was kind of talking about the beginning with what happened when Russia’s reserves were confiscated, China has around $800 billion of, of US Treasuries and foreign currency reserves. And it looked at what happened with China, it’s see, with Russia. It’s seeing what’s going on now with the Trump administration and tariffs and saying, you know, do we really want to hold as many dollars as we do? And so that’s going to be the trade going forward. It’s just really having China and the rest of the world really diversify out of dollars and into gold. The China Central Bank is buying gold now.
05:05 Speaker A
And so as we’re thinking about some of the, the names that you were mentioning a moment ago, what’s, what’s different about your top pick versus the others that are in the space right now? And the analysis around where they could potentially see some favorability within the market.
05:22 Chris Mancini
Well, I think the big deal with Newmont is that, um, they, like the market doesn’t like them because of the, the deal that they did with Newcrest. And the market’s still digesting that deal. And, uh, and Newmont’s taking advantage of that by buying back lots and lots of their stock. So as they’re generating all this free cash flow at these really high prices, they have a very clean balance sheet. And so they’re in a position right now, they’re also growing production as they’re buying back the stock. So in like a year and a half when their production’s higher, they bought and back all this, all this cheap stock, then they’ll be in a position to, to raise their dividend and really return capital to shareholders in the form of a dividend.