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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/28/bullion-bon...
Is that nominal or inflation-adjusted?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering how our fiscal conservatives are trying to switch the money printer to turbo, I would say it's probably inflationary combined with a lack of confidence in the stock market.
> lack of confidence in the stock market. Considering most stocks have been equally increasing/at ATH, I’m not sure that’s the reason.
Other than for few years in mid 2010s gold seemed to be at ATH most of the time
Yeah I do not see why this is worthy of interest. Gold is pretty much always appreciating.
> an ounce of gold in Roman times bought a nice suit, and today, an ounce of gold buys a nice suit.
Consequently it's the standard safe store of value investors flee to when the world is in upheaval, a role it has played since well before Roman times. Its price being high is a standard indicator of investors fearing miserable times ahead. See, for example, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/safe-haven.asp or https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/flighttoquality.asp.
If it appears to you that "gold is pretty much always appreciating", that's a function of your perspective, similar to the phenomenon where, sometimes, when you're standing on railroad tracks, a faraway train looks bigger and bigger and bigger if you just stand there and watch. In this case what is happening is that the value of whatever you're using to measure the gold's value, probably dollars, is depreciating.
Gold's value is pretty volatile in the short term, though, so in fact most of the time gold is not at an all-time high, even measured in dollars. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_as_an_investment#/media/F..., for example, you'll see that gold didn't reach its high of 02011 again for about 9 years, and didn't reach its high of 01980 again for 27 years, until the subprime mortgage crisis in 02007. To me it looks like the recent periods that gold has reached a nominal all-time price are roughly 01968–01975, 01979–01980, 02008–02011, the first half of 02020 when nobody knew what was going to happen with covid, and since Trump got elected. 13 out of the last 60 or so years.
The following plot on that page shows what I mean about inflation; adjusted for the BLS CPI, gold hadn't exceeded its 01980 peak until the last few months, not even in the subprime mortgage crisis.
kmeisthax's shadowbanned graph of oil barrels per gold ounce is also pretty thought-provoking: stable within the 10–35 range from 01946 until 02023, with the stunning exception of 02020 ("The peak in 2020 was driven by COVID-19, which boosted gold prices as a safe haven while oil demand and prices plummeted due to global lockdowns.") https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-gold-t...
Is that nominal or inflation-adjusted?
https://totalrealreturns.com/s/GLD
(Not quite the same due to the compounding 0.40%/year expense ratio of the ETF, but probably close enough for this conversation.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> lack of confidence in the stock market. Considering most stocks have been equally increasing/at ATH, I’m not sure that’s the reason.
Exactly - when equities, commodities, prices of goods, crypto, .... are all up, this tells us that the real situation is that currency is down.
(not to act like im above it all, i still have my gold-plated pokemon jigglypuff trading card from burger king in 1999 and i often use golden paint on model kits).
