Gold bull McEwen sticks with his $5,000 call as pot stocks peak

Gold mining veteran Rob McEwen is nothing if not optimistic.

The founder of Goldcorp Inc. is sticking with his bold prediction that the precious metal will soar almost fourfold to $5,000 an ounce, bolstered by a weaker dollar and waning demand for trendy assets like pot stocks.

"Once people get over buying cryptos and biotech and cannabis stocks they're going to start looking at gold again," the chief executive officer of McEwen Mining Inc. said in an interview Thursday in Toronto with Bloomberg Television. Asked about his price target, McEwen said: "I've always liked $2,000 and beyond that $5,000."

McEwen has been wrong before. In 2017, he predicted a "tsunami" of liquidity seeking safe haven would push gold above $5,000 an ounce. In 2016, he predicted prices of $1,700 to $1,900 by the end of the year. The metal ended below $1,200 an ounce, and trades only slightly higher now at about $1,290.

A loss of confidence in the dollar, a peak in the broader stock market and fears of inflation will feed the impending spike in gold prices, he said.

"The gold bull market started in January of 2016," he said. "People haven't seen it yet but we're about a third of the way through."

McEwen, 68, is a fixture in Canada's tight-knit gold mining community. The founder of Goldcorp is a noted philanthropist, having donated tens of millions of dollars to healthcare, business education, and other causes. He also remains the country's most famously unabashed gold bull.

(By Danielle Bochove)