Beyond the Rally: Reassessing Gold and Silver at the Moneycontrol Global Wealth Summit

Gold and Silver in Focus as Investors Reassess Allocation Strategies

In a significant shift from traditional investment playbooks, investors are now diversifying their portfolios and reevaluating the role of gold and silver as more deliberate allocation strategies. Geopolitical tensions and war-led uncertainty have pushed precious metals back into focus, raising questions about their reliability as hedges and their reaction to global triggers.

At the Moneycontrol Global Wealth Summit 2026, industry experts Swarup Mohanty, Vice Chairman & CEO of Mirae Asset Investment Managers, Kalpen Parekh, MD & CEO of DSP Mutual Fund, and Vaibhav Porwal, Co-founder of Dezerv, discussed the implications of this shift on investment portfolios.

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Interest in gold and silver picked up sharply towards the end of 2025, but most of that money came in after prices had already run up. This reflects a deeper behavioural shift, where moving between asset classes is now frictionless but also driving shorter-term decisions. Layering in global uncertainty, gold's resurgence starts to look less like a strategic move and more like a reactive defensive move.

Swarup Mohanty drew a contrast with how gold was traditionally viewed in India, where it was accumulated rather than traded. "Gold was accumulated, not traded," he described a long-term mindset where price fluctuations mattered less than steady ownership. This mindset is evolving, and investors are now treating gold like equities, which can lead to behaviour changes and not always constructively.

Kalpen Parekh pushed back on the idea that gold works as a reliable hedge in all conditions, citing data that doesn't always support this narrative, especially on inflation. However, he stressed that diversification is what makes gold useful, as it tends to behave differently from equities. Even a small allocation can help balance a portfolio, but expecting it to drive long-term returns misses the point.

The discussion made it clear that gold still has a role in investment portfolios, but not in isolation. Investors are moving towards more balanced portfolios, where allocation decisions are more deliberate, and factors like inflation, geopolitics, and central bank activity are part of the thinking, not just price momentum.

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