A major exchange-traded fund and mutual fund manager finds the winning gold trade isn’t talked about as much as the artificial intelligence trade — but maybe it should be.

VanEck CEO Jan van Eck thinks the best investment this year is “the hedge against political cycles.” To him, that means investing in gold. 

“It is quietly the best performing asset this year,” Van Eck told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” from the Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach on Monday.

Gold hit another record on Friday, its 37th record this year. As of Friday’s market close, it is up 28% since the start of the year.

Van Eck, whose firm runs the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, expects foreign investments in bullion will continue to give the commodity a boost. It should also help in lifting gold miners higher, which started the year lagging the commodity. But as of Friday, the VanEck Gold Miners ETF has started to outperform, up 31% this year.

“I think you own both because the miners, if they catch up at all, it’s going to rip,” he said.

As for the AI trade, van Eck says it’s “amazing” how investors refuse to give up on it.

“It’s like part of people’s model portfolios, or core portfolios, is to have this tactical overweight to semis. And some of our biggest clients actually bought on the dip over the last week or two,” the VanEck CEO said.

Last month, his firm launched the VanEck Fabless Semiconductor ETF. It’s a companion to its VanEck Semiconductor ETF that excludes companies that run their own foundries, such as Intel.

FactSet reports the new ETF’s top holdings as Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices as of Friday.

“Why spend billions of dollars on building the chips if you don’t have to?” van Eck said. “Nvidia doesn’t build its own chips. So that’s another kind of investment strategy.”

Since launching on Aug. 28, the VanEck Fabless Semiconductor ETF is up a half percent.

Disclaimer

Former President Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance’s unfounded claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio weaken the Republican Party’s border message, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine wrote in an op-ed published Friday.

“The Biden administration’s failure to control the southern border is a very important issue that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are talking about and one that the American people are rightfully deeply concerned about,” DeWine, a Republican, wrote in the New York Times.

“But their verbal attacks against these Haitians — who are legally present in the United States — dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border,” he said.

The perception that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have failed to stem the tide of asylum seekers ant the souther border has long been a key message for Republicans up and down the ballot, not just for Trump’s reelection campaign.

Trump’s latest immigration claims thrust Springfield, Ohio into the national spotlight, after he and Vance — who represents Ohio in the Senate — promoted unfounded rumors that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating city resident’s pets.

DeWine and local officials have repeatedly denied the claims.

“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” DeWine, who was born in Springfield, wrote Friday.

“This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”

In the days since Trump and Vance promoted the unfounded rumors — which the Trump campaign knew were false, according to the Wall Street Journal — dozens of bomb threats have led to Springfield city schools to be evacuated and closed.

DeWine on Monday announced that Ohio state police would begin conducting sweeps of city schools every morning and night. The threats, which officials have found to all be hoaxes, have also targeted city government buildings and a local hospital.

William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, told NBC News that the Republican vice-presidential nominee “is glad” that Dewine supports the Trump-Vance campaign, but Vance and DeWine are “not always going to agree on every issue.”

In his op-ed, DeWine emphasized the role Haitian immigrants played in reviving Springfield’s economy, which he said experienced “tough times” in the 1980s and 90s.

“Now, however, Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs.”

“They are there legally. They are there to work.”