Gold Over Bonds: Citi's CIO Owns Zero Bonds in 2026

Imagine being one of the most powerful investors in wealth management and deciding that bonds, the bedrock of every 60/40 portfolio since basically forever, are just not worth it. That is exactly where Kate Moore, CIO at Citi Wealth, stands right now. Across multiple Bloomberg podcast appearances this week, Moore made her case clearly: she owns zero bonds in her personal portfolio and holds gold via ETF as a partial duration replacement instead.

Her logic is not crazy. Core CPI is running around 2.5% year-over-year with headline near 3.5%, and the Fed is openly telegraphing a potential December rate hike. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said this week that more hikes are likely needed. When rates are still climbing and deficits keep expanding under any administration, holding long-duration bonds starts to feel less like prudent diversification and more like a slow-motion wealth transfer to the Treasury. Moore pairs her gold position with a growth-tilted equity portfolio, which is about as far from your grandfather's balanced fund as you can get.

The YouTube consensus this week was surprisingly aligned on gold's appeal, though the reasons varied. The macro crowd pointed to rising real yields and deficit spending as structural tailwinds for the metal. The more skeptical voices, like Jeremiah Babe, took the argument to its apocalyptic conclusion, advocating for physical gold and silver outside the banking system entirely after citing a French bank cyber attack losing $133 million and a $6.3 billion Binance hack. Different vibes, same trade.

Meanwhile, the case against bonds got reinforced by this week's jobs data. October came in at 165,000 payrolls added against a 59,000 estimate, with unemployment ticking down to 4.1%. That sounds great until you remember wage growth is only running at 3.1% against a CPI of 3.7%, meaning real wages are still negative. A strong labor market that still cannot keep up with inflation is exactly the environment where bonds get crushed from both ends: rates rise and purchasing power erodes.

The contrarian read is that gold has already had a monster run and Moore's call is at minimum a crowded trade. If the Fed sticks the landing and core inflation continues drifting toward 2%, bonds could stage a sharp recovery and make the no-bond crowd look very silly very fast. Bloomberg's Edward Harrison flagged a PPI survey for the coming month at a striking 6.6%, which suggests inflation is not done surprising people yet, so that soft-landing scenario has real hurdles ahead.

At some point the bond market will offer a genuinely attractive entry again. This week's data suggests that point is probably not today.