2026 So Far: Gold Up, Sentiment Down – What Advisor Conversations Reveal

Markets have entered 2026 with weaker performance and sharply rising uncertainty. As of last Friday, the S&P 500 was down 3.06% year-to-date, while volatility surged. The VIX has risen 87.39%, reflecting a substantial increase in investor uncertainty.

In this environment, defensive assets often move back into focus. Analysis of more than 10,000 advisor-client meetings shows a clear relationship between client sentiment at the start of meetings and gold price performance.

Specifically, weaker starting sentiment tends to precede stronger gold performance in the following month. This suggests advisor conversations may capture shifts in investor risk perception before they show up in markets.

Gold is showing up more frequently in conversations

That relationship shows up directly in advisor-client conversations, too.

Since late 2025, discussions about gold have increased materially. In November, gold appeared in about 5% of meetings. By February, that figure had risen to 13.3%, more than doubling in just a few months.

Other assets show different patterns. Oil discussions spiked briefly in January, while crypto discussions have fluctuated month to month. Gold, however, has shown the clearest sustained rise in conversation frequency.

→ Gold conversations are partly client-driven

Crypto remains the most client-driven asset class in conversations, which is consistent with historical patterns. At the other end of the spectrum, core portfolio assets like equities and bonds are still overwhelmingly introduced by advisors.

Gold and oil fall somewhere in the middle. Roughly two-thirds of these discussions are initiated by advisors, while about one-third are initiated by clients. Compared with equities and fixed income, this reflects a meaningfully higher level of client-driven engagement.

This pattern suggests gold tends to surface not just as a portfolio allocation discussion but also as a reaction to broader uncertainty.

→ New concerns are emerging in client conversations

To understand what may be driving the recent shift in sentiment, we examined the topics that appeared most often in conversations over the winter months.

Two themes emerged as potential disruptors:

• AI disrupting the labor market
• Middle East geopolitical risk

Discussions about AI impacting jobs appeared in 5.5% of meetings, while Middle East tensions appeared in 3.4%.

However, the impact on sentiment differs substantially between the two.

When meetings included discussion of AI and the labor market, sentiment changes were roughly in line with the average meeting. In contrast, conversations that referenced the Middle East showed significantly lower sentiment by the end of the meeting, indicating a much sharper effect on client confidence.

→ What the data suggests

Emerging macro concerns are beginning to shape advisor-client conversations in 2026 in ways that meaningfully affect both client sentiment and allocation preferences.

If these themes continue to appear in conversations, we should expect investor behavior to follow similar patterns. Rising uncertainty around global stability or employment security typically pushes investors toward defensive positioning, which aligns with the recent increase in gold discussions.

More broadly, the data reinforces a consistent pattern: advisor-client conversations often surface shifts in investor risk perception before those shifts are evident in markets or portfolio flows.

As macro concerns evolve through 2026, tracking these conversations may provide an early signal of where investor attention shifts and where allocations follow.