Gold will be a winner no matter who clinches the U.S. election, investor says

Gold and gold miners are set to benefit no matter who wins the U.S. election this week, one investor told CNBC.

That’s because the United States will likely to adopt a sizeable fiscal stimulus program no matter which candidate wins the presidency, James Rasteh, CIO of Coast Capital, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday.

“We would be printing trillions of dollars more and all of that ultimately has extraordinarily positive repercussions for gold,” he said.

“The fiscal and monetary policies would be almost identical under either leadership. I think that the differences that are being delineated are really more imaginative than real,” Rasteh added.

We are discovering a lot less gold than we are producing. We will be producing 50% less gold than we do today.
James Rasteh
CIO OF COAST CAPITAL
Fiscal stimulus — or policies such as government spending or tax reduction aimed at boosting economic activity — typically leads to a wider deficit. That could undermine investor confidence and prompt them to put their money into safer assets such as gold, and in turn, push gold prices higher.

Spot gold rallied above $2,000 in August before pulling back to trade around the $1,900 level in recent weeks. On Wednesday, the precious metal traded at $1,912.41 as of 7:25 a.m. HK/SIN.

Gold supply
A report from the World Gold Council last week said worldwide demand and supply for the precious metal fell last quarter due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Rasteh explained that gold miners are spending more capital now to look for new gold and even when it is found, the quality of the precious metal discovered is much lower. “We are discovering a lot less gold than we are producing,” he said, adding that in a decade, “we will be producing 50% less gold than we do today.”

We think that … the case for small-and-mid-cap gold miners, which admittedly are very difficult to invest into, is as strong as it has been in many, many generations.
James Rasteh
CIO OF COAST CAPITAL
According to Rasteh, capital invested in the gold market are flowing into exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, where the major miners dominate. It is an “extraordinarily underowned sector,” he said.

Given that those larger players are not making significant discoveries for new sources of gold and are running out of reserves, they are likely to be forced into buying out the smaller names in the market.

“So what we are doing is we’re buying all the wonderful small gold miners with long term attractive reserves and as activist investors, we’re able to put them up for sale,” Rasteh said. A new fund from Coast Capital is investing most of its capital into publicly-traded small-and-mid-cap mining companies.

“We think that very specifically, the case for small-and-mid-cap gold miners, which admittedly are very difficult to invest into, is as strong as it has been in many, many generations,” he added.

Meanwhile, major gold stocks are notably higher this year: Canada’s Barrick Gold has notched up more than 46% gains while U.S.-based Newmont, the world’s largest gold miner, is up more than 48%.

Saheli Roy Choudhury