Rethinking The 60/40 Portfolio In The U.S. As Gold Becomes A "Core Allocation" — WisdomTree
11/19/2025
As macro conditions shift, investors are beginning to view gold as a core allocation for structural resilience, while Europe's growing allocation to gold — now equal to sovereign bonds — is accelerating the adoption of real assets like ETFs in the United States, according to a new analysis from WisdomTree.
"There's a quiet revolution taking shape in portfolios," wrote WisdomTree Global Head of Research Christopher Gannatti and Europe Director of Research Nitesh Shah. "For decades, the 60/40 mix — 60% equities, 40% bonds — was the shorthand for prudence, diversification and balance. But the regime that made that formula work — low inflation, stable growth and negative stock-bond return correlations — appears to have shifted."
The researchers said that after 2022, investors are questioning how well bonds counteract equity risk. "In this new macro geometry, investors are re-examining what the '40' should really be," they said. "Morgan Stanley's latest Global Insights calls gold 'an attractive hedge against fiscal largesse and geopolitics,' noting its 50% rally year-to-date and near-zero equity correlation."
"Gold is not just a store of value; it's a statement about the limits of paper promises."
"Investors aren't running from volatility; they're buying the only liquid asset that sits outside the liabilities of any government or central bank," they emphasized.
And this represents a profound shift. "Instead of treating gold as an accessory to a portfolio, some strategists now treat it as a core sleeve of real assets — a 20% reallocation from the bond bucket that acknowledges diversification is no longer about opposites, but about orthogonality," the analysts said. "For allocators, this isn't nostalgia for the gold standard; it's recognition that the architecture of portfolio resilience is changing. The new 60/20/20 mindset — equities, fixed income and real assets — may prove less a radical break than a quiet return to first principles: holding something that no one else owes you."
Gannatti and Shah said this evolution is well underway in Europe. "In WisdomTree's 2025 Investor Survey of 802 European and U.K. participants, gold ranked as the top safe-haven asset, with 41% of respondents identifying it as their preferred store of value, well ahead of Bitcoin and the U.S. dollar," they noted.
** Information contained within this email should not be construed as Legal, Accounting, Tax or Investment advice. Patriot Gold Group is a Gold & Silver Dealer, representatives are NOT Licensed Financial Planners and do NOT give investing or tax advice.
|
