America’s Obsession With Weight-Loss Drugs Is Affecting the Economy of Denmark

Ozempic and Wegovy are tilting the scales of Denmark’s economy.

Their Danish manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, has generated billions of dollars of revenue and supercharged the company’s market capitalisation. That has led to lower interest rates in the country, according to a bank report and economists.

The market value of Denmark’s biggest company has risen by more than a third so far this year to about $419 billion, bigger than the country’s gross domestic product of about $406 billion. The measures aren’t synonymous: market capitalisation is the value of all Novo Nordisk shares, while GDP measures goods and services produced in a year. But the comparison demonstrates how Novo Nordisk has surged past companies such as Lego and Carlsberg to sway the economy of its nordic homeland.

Take foreign-exchange management for one example.

Denmark’s currency, the krone, is pegged to the euro. Central bankers in Copenhagen adjust interest rates and make other interventions to keep its value steady with that of the continent’s common currency.

Novo Nordisk’s U.S. sales of Ozempic and Wegovy have been so strong that it has had to convert dollars into kroner in unusually large quantities, raising the krone’s value relative to the euro, said Danske Bank director Jens Naervig Pedersen.

“Because the pharmaceutical industry’s exports have grown so much, it’s creating a big influx of currency into the Danish economy,” he said.

Denmark’s central bankers have responded by keeping interest rates below the European Central Bank’s, weakening the krone, said Pedersen.

Denmark’s central bank declined to comment.

Novo Nordisk’s success with drugs used for weight loss and diabetes is overall a boon to the Danish economy, which will benefit from more jobs created by the company’s growth as it invests domestically, economists said. Lower interest rates also benefit home buyers who can secure mortgage rates somewhat lower than in the rest of Europe, they said.

“It is an embarrassment of riches—this is good for the Danish economy and they’re getting a lot of export revenues,” said Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

For small countries, having a domestic company play such a disproportionate role in the economy carries risks. For years, fellow Nordic nation Finland’s economy was dominated by telecom Nokia, which at its peak in 2000 accounted for 4% of the country’s GDP, more than a fifth of exports and some 70% of value on its stock exchange. It played a significant role in Finland’s growth from 1995-2007, when GDP per capita rose 55%, nearly double the increase in the U.S.

Nokia’s decline also coincided with a decade of economic stagnation in Finland after 2008. The collapse of Nokia’s handset market, largely because of competition from the iPhone that Apple introduced in 2007, exacerbated Finland’s economic woes, which under austerity policies and the eurozone crisis saw its per capita income decline over the next decade.

Novo Nordisk is now the second-most valuable public company in Europe after luxury brand LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Analysts estimate Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug sales to be $6.1 billion this year and to reach nearly $15 billion annually in 2027, according to data provider FactSet.

Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.

The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.

Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.

Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.

Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.

These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.

Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.

Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.

Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.

“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.

“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.

Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.

“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.

That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.

“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.

They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.

An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.

What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.

One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.

But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.

America’s Obsession With Weight-Loss Drugs Is Affecting the Economy of Denmark

Novo Nordisk’s market capitalisation has matched the GDP of its home country