Gold prices jumped as many investors ran for cover on the news that the United Kingdom had voted to leave the European Union. But is gold really a safe haven?

Undoubtedly, the unexpected “Brexit” vote and subsequent market downturn, which erased this year’s gains, coincided with a dramatic surge in gold prices to two-year highs after a prolonged slump.

But cooler heads have prevailed in recent days as the Brexit reaction has subsided, and gold has started to settle, with spot gold prices falling slightly on Wednesday and Thursday to around $1,320 an ounce. Gold ended June up by more than 8 percent for the month.

“Western investment demand is probably what was missing in gold strength,” says Trey Reik, senior portfolio manager of Sprott Asset Management’s Institutional Gold & Precious Metal Strategy. “When we look at the financial and political variables involved in the Brexit vote, it’s tough for me to interpret any of it as not positive for gold at the margin.”

Brexit is a good example of why investors should own some gold within their portfolios, says Reik, but it doesn’t make gold any more or less attractive. Because of the esoteric nature of precious metal prices, there’s no way to know for sure whether gold is overvalued or undervalued at any given time.

While investor sentiment drives sudden changes in gold prices, gold’s value is moved by variables like sovereign interest rates, economic performance, investment demand, physical demand and ETF flows.

“I’ve never found anyone with a high degree of certainty about the true valuation of gold, but there is the comparative valuation, which is extremely important,” Reik says. “There are a few things that we can generally agree on: Financial asset prices are fairly richly priced, correlations between asset classes are on the rise, and liquidity is being challenged in certain parts of the markets. With that in mind, I would say that the insurance value of gold is at the highest level it’s been at in 15 years.

In response to Brexit, central banks could likely either keep interest rates stable or lower rates, or they could provide some sort of quantitative easing, any or all of which could lead to further currency depreciations, leaving gold behind as a stable-value investment, Reik says. “Everyone says that gold doesn’t pay interest, but the dollar doesn’t either. Yes, gold comes with storage costs, but that whole consideration becomes less of an impediment in the ever-decreasing sovereign rate environment.”

It’s not the price of gold that’s moving, but market sentiment around gold driven by political disorder and monetary policy, says Roy Sebag, CEO of GoldMoney, an international asset manager. A lack of physical demand is preventing gold from running even higher.

“When you see an event like Brexit, it reminds market participants that at the end of the day currencies are just an implicit guarantee by governments,” Sebag says. “If there’s a major sea change in politics or government, then the faith in the government currency changes in relation to gold.”

Sebag says that in recent days, clients have been selling gold to reap profits from the post-Brexit bounce, and clients have favored the company’s vaults in Singapore and Switzerland over its vault in London.

Gold is not a hedge against market volatility, warns Sebag.

“That’s one of the biggest misunderstandings about it, that it’s somehow a tail-hedge protection,” Sebag says. “People use that misunderstanding to rationalize including gold in their portfolio constructions, but gold shouldn’t be compared to anything other than currencies. It’s not going to make people rich, and it’s not going to do as well as a great company like an Apple or a Google.”

Gold may be at or near a peak for the time being, says Sebag, but it’s a good place to be in the long term.

“I don’t see how the macro situation is going to improve,” says Sebag. “There are now around $12 trillion in negative-yielding bonds, but if you take all the gold today, it’s valued at around $7 trillion—the path of least resistance for gold is higher.”

If advisors do choose gold as a safe haven, they’re still left with a wide array of investment possibilities. GoldMoney offers stakes in physical gold bullion in vaults around the world.

Gold funds have also become a popular option, despite some investor concern about whether some of these funds actually have the physical reserves to back up their asset value. The SPDR Gold Trust ETF saw a 4.9 percent price increase the day after the Brexit result was announced, and the fund’s holdings rose by 2.7 tons in recent days.

However, investors can use part of their gold allocation to invest in gold miners, says Reik, which may provide some leveraged exposure to the precious metal. Sprott, based in Carlsbad, Calif., offers two factor-weighted gold miner funds, the Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM) and the Sprott Junior Gold Miners ETF (SGDJ).

The miners have also enjoyed a post-Brexit resurgence, says Reik, and both SGDM and SGDJ ended June up more than 24 percent for the month.

Whether the bounce in gold prices is enough to clear up the miners’ balance sheets remains to be seen. Many gold companies borrowed heavily to expand their operations after gold prices soared to record highs in 2011, but have struggled since as prices dropped.

Whether or not gold resumes its post-Brexit climb, it’s still a good holding in a time of political uncertainty, wrote James Luke and Mark Lacey, fund managers in metals and equities for London-based asset manager Schroders who advocated owning both bullion and gold equities.

“Even without Brexit, gold had already set out on the first steps of a path back from being a forgotten asset to a core allocation in a deeply uncertain world driven ultimately by negative real interest rates and the dawning realization that any global ‘normalization’ is a long way off,” wrote Luke and Lacey. “Gold remains an under-owned hedge against global central bank credibility and under-appreciated global risks, particularly from China.”

Reik does warn, however, that crises are often used to market gold investments using “dramatic” narratives, so investors should take Brexit-based pitches with a grain of salt.

“Whenever an event like the Brexit vote comes along, gold enthusiasts become more enthusiastic,” Reik says. “They’ve been saying these things for years, and they’ve been zero-for-the-lot up to now. I don’t necessarily subscribe to the view that the world has changed.”