Gold’s meteoric rise over the last few years has prompted fresh debate about whether the rally has further to run. Sankaran Naren, Chief Investment Officer at ICICI Prudential AMC — which oversees roughly ₹10 lakh crore of assets, he said on a recent podcast — delivered a blunt verdict: for long-term investors, “the time to invest in gold and silver is gone.”
“Gold and silver have become one of the most dangerous asset classes if I take a long-term view,” Naren told hosts, emphasising that past momentum is not always a reason to keep buying. His comments cut against a chorus of analysts who still champion precious metals as portfolio diversifiers and inflation hedges.
Naren traced his caution to the mechanics of cycles. “If an asset class has done extremely well in the recent past, you have to be very careful,” he said, arguing that historically the best opportunities often emerge after years of poor returns — not after prolonged outperformance. That logic underpins his preference for asset allocation and multi-asset mutual funds rather than concentrated bets on one shiny sector.
A veteran of markets since 1989, Naren also drew on personal lessons from early-career mistakes. He said the painful corrections of the 1990s taught him to “introspect” and refine decision-making, a process that he believes gives him an edge. “When you make a mistake and that to a costly mistake you have to go and introspect and you have to think how to not repeat the same mistake,” he said.
Naren described his approach as contrarian but disciplined: “You have to do contrarian with a calculator.” In other words, bets that go against consensus must still pass rigorous quantitative and risk checks. He cited examples of junk infrastructure and real-estate names in 2007 that deserved to be avoided precisely because the numbers did not justify the contrarian stance.
On sectoral outlooks, Naren warned about froth in US artificial intelligence-linked mega-cap stocks. “What scares me today is the American artificial intelligence-based companies,” he said, noting that aggregate market caps among a handful of firms run into trillions — a concentration that, in his view, raises systemic risk. By contrast, he flagged oil and gas and certain beaten-down IT names as areas worth researching for potential mean reversion, arguing that some cyclical sectors still offer value after prolonged underperformance.
For ordinary investors, Naren urged simplicity and discipline. He recommended multi-asset and hybrid funds as suitable building blocks for retail portfolios, particularly for those who cannot actively manage stock selection and sizing. “If you do asset allocation, hybrid funds do that job best in the mutual fund space,” he said, adding that systematic investing through SIPs and sensible sizing are core to long-term success.
Naren also stressed temperament. Quoting his conversations with veteran contrarians, he said the ability to act — to buy big when opportunities arise and to resist the daily noise of markets and social media — separates good investors from the rest.
His bottom line: Precious metals’ recent run does not automatically justify fresh large-scale allocations. Instead, investors should return to first principles — valuation, cycle, and calibrated risk — and rely on asset-allocation tools to navigate a market that, he warns, remains both cyclical and unpredictable.
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