ET NEWS

Mumbai: Wealth managers and strategists have one message for investors sitting on hefty gains from the tearaway rally in gold and silver: take money off the table. With both the precious metals having more than doubled in the past 18 months in a record-breaking run-up, pulling in a wave of new investors, the risk-reward may be stretched to hold an outsized bet, they said. "If you bought gold and silver over the past year and a half, this is the time to take profits and be a fence sitter," said Sahil Kapoor, head - Products, and market strategist, DSP Mutual Fund. Over the past 18 months, gold has been up 101% in dollar terms and 116% in rupee terms. Silver has surged 167% in dollar terms and 198% in rupee terms. While international silver has dropped 36.63% and gold is down 7.8% from their recent lifetime highs in January 2026, the lower prices may not warrant major fresh allocations at this juncture. "Precious metals are priced to perfection after the sharp run-up in prices we saw over the last couple of years," said Akshay Chinchalkar, managing partner and head of strategy, The Wealth Company. Chinchalkar recommends waiting for a "big crack" before deploying lump-sum funds and prefers that investors use Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) - a staggered form of deployment - to build gold exposure.128442633 Gold and silver have rallied mainly on safe-haven demand, driven by simmering geopolitical tensions, aggressive US trade policies, inflationary pressures and sustained central-bank buying. Silver's surge, however, goes beyond its role as a store of value: the metal's expanding industrial demand - from solar panels and electric vehicles to AI-related technologies that have seen swelling investment in recent years - has also fuelled its rise. The strong rally prompted Indian investors, deprived of gains in equities here, to pump record sums over the past couple of months. Monthly inflows into gold and silver schemes topped equity funds for the first time in January. Precious-metal ETFs drew ₹33,503 crore during the month - more than double December's ₹15,600 crore and higher than ₹24,029 crore into equity schemes. Flows into equity mutual funds dipped 14% in January from the previous month. Investors would be better off not crowding into these products, said strategists. "New investors should not enter with large weights or allocate fresh funds at this time. At best, to avoid FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), start a token SIP, if you can't control your urge to participate," said Kapoor.

Mumbai: Leading Indian drugmakers such as Sun Pharma and Glenmark are exploring the use of AI as a necessary tool to cut the time taken and costs for new drug development. The two drugmakers, in particular, are seeing a growing contribution from their new discovery research programmes in their global revenues as Indian companies see a shifting trend to innovative drugs from generics.Use of AI in pharmaceutical research is already picking up pace across the world. According to Precedence Research, last year global drugmakers invested $6.93 billion in AI for drug discovery, which is expected to swell to $16.5 billion by 2034.Dilip Shanghvi, executive chairman, Sun Pharma, told ET, "We are seriously evaluating how we can get help in terms of expertise which can leverage our capabilities to strengthen research. Key issue is to understand how we can accelerate our drug development process".Glenn Saldanha, chairman, Glenmark Pharma, added that while AI will play an important role in research, in the short term, it will be more applicable in the small molecule (chemistry-based) drug discovery space. "I think biologics will take a little longer, but it will play an important role in the entire research cycle-from clinical trials to molecular modelling or drug design."Last July, IGI, a Glenmark subsidiary, struck a record out-licensing deal valued at $1.9 billion with US drugmaker AbbVie for its drug to treat multiple myeloma (a form of blood cancer) coded ISB2001. Glenmark received an upfront payment of $700 million while staggered milestones are expected as the drug progresses in research.With revenues of ₹52,041 crore last year, Sun Pharma saw 20% revenue contribution from its innovative/new research products.Dilip Shanghvi and Glenn Saldanha were speaking at the flagship ET Pharma Summit in Mumbai last week.Saldanha said in the short term, there is opportunity in saving timelines in analysing phase three clinical trial data and submitting the application to regulatory agencies.Shanghvi noted, "Since the (AI) technology exists and capability exists as well, we need to think how we can leverage all of that so that we can recruit patients faster in phase three studies, complete those studies faster and then go for the (regulatory) filings. All these take close to one and half years and there I see significant value".