State Street’s Head of Gold Strategy Doshi Believes Next $1000 Move in Gold Likely to Upside

SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), sponsored by State Street Investment Management, has produced outsized returns for investors in recent years with a 27% gain in 2024 and a 64% rally in 2025, but while 2026 started with near-30% advance into January-end, the rally appears to have sold.  Relative to its highs on January 29th, the ETF price is down over 10%.  State Street’s own Head of Gold Strategy Aakash Doshi and Head of U.S. Wealth Allison Bonds Mazza took the stage at the VettaFi-sponsored Exchange event this week to defend the precious metal’s luster.

Doshi argues that beyond the physical buying from central banks and China retail in the second half of last year, it was the buying from western ETF investors that brought the price of Gold through $4,000 per ounce and above $5,000.   Now sitting near $5,000, he believes that the next thousand dollar move for gold over the next twelve months is higher, not lower.

The strategist outlines several structural forces supporting his bullish scenario.  First, Doshi contends that the “Sell America” theme, which resulted in heightened economic uncertainty and weak U.S. Dollar since Donald Trump reclaimed the White House, produced an impetus for precious metal buying as a “left-tail hedge” for investors, as the asset class outperformed by the biggest margins since 1979. The rise in demand for Gold has also been growing coming out of the pandemic as an alternative to the traditionally balanced stock-bond portfolio, where the inverse relationship broke down in 2022 and saw the positive correlation between the asset classes spike to multi-decade highs, Doshi argues. 

More recently, Doshi cited the latest data from Institute of International Finance claiming that as of 2025 end, the total global public and private debt has ballooned by an additional $29 trillion to a new record of $348 trillion in a surge of global debasement for fiat currencies, and he sees the precious metal as a natural diversifier.

In terms of its position inside investor portfolios, Doshi noted that as a portion of global ETF and mutual fund assets, Gold still ended last year below 1%, but State Street believes that strategic allocation should be 3%-5% as a minimum.   The strategist concludes that, while an argument can be made that gold at times has been overbought in light of the recent appreciation, as an overall asset, it is not over-owned.

Gold Funds Beat Gold Miner Funds

Contrasting the attributes and benefits of owning GLD to some of the other ETFs in the precious metals space – most notably Gold Miner funds –  State Street’s Head of U.S. Wealth Allison Bonds Mazza warned against conflating the two.   Mazza’s top argument?  If you’re allocating to an alternative asset class that seeks to protect your portfolio from the positive equity / fixed-income correlation, you should not do so with more equities. 

As evidence, Mazza cites side-by-side performance of GLD vastly outperforming Miners ETFs during the global financial crisis and also more recently.  Year-to-date, gold is up 16%, and the miners are up 11%, Mazza notes.  Some of the bigger Gold Miner alternatives include the Van Eck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) with $29.3 billion in assets under management and MSCI’s Global Gold Miners ETF (RING) with $3.4 billion in AUM.  State Street’s GLD boasts $172.5 billion AUM and its SPDR Gold MiniShares Trust ETF (GLDM), which Mazza recommends to investors looking to add Gold as a core long-term holding, has about $32 billion in assets.