Gold hits all time high • Hacker News Board

Re: Gold hits all time high

#41

Post by lomase » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

Muromec wrote: post #23

kragen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold has a pretty stable value over long periods of time; the famous quote is: > 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.…

An ounce is what -- 3800 USD now? That is indeed a nice suit.

A hand made suit would fit better in this case.

Re: Gold hits all time high

#42

Post by davidw » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

jasonsb wrote: post #10

fullshark wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought gold being high is a "fear" indicator

[flagged]

'Greed!' as the answer to all questions is kind of lazy though.

I hear this in housing politics: prices are high because of 'greed!'.

Seems weird that people in San Francisco are so much greedier than people in Houston.

I would take greedy as sort of a constant and try and think about why greedy people are having more or less success in a given place and time.

Re: Gold hits all time high

#43

Post by skybrian » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #25

Gold, silver, stocks, real estate, Bitcoin, baseball cards, fine art, Rolexes - everything is trading at or near their all time highs. The value of the US dollar is simply going down.

The art market doesn't seem to be doing well at all:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45175628

Re: Gold hits all time high

#44

Post by ambicapter » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #32

m101 wrote: post #22

The drivers of this in my view are: 1) flight from USD assets given views that one cannot depend on US assets as safe havens 2) central banks increasing gold holdings 3) purchases by Chinese investors as they have few places to invest their money 4) concern around debt levels deficits and democratic process ability to fix this 5) concerns around central bank independence, and hence inflation targeting, being undermin…

We've also had four big rounds of Quantitative Easing from the Fed since the financial crisis, with the most recent coming right after the pandemic. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

This really feels like the original sin to me (I am not remotely an economist). Perhaps it can just be fixed with taxes to take money out of circulation.

Re: Gold hits all time high

#45

Post by pizlonator » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #25

Gold, silver, stocks, real estate, Bitcoin, baseball cards, fine art, Rolexes - everything is trading at or near their all time highs. The value of the US dollar is simply going down.

Bingo

So then the question is - how long can this continue before something snaps

Re: Gold hits all time high

#46

Post by ajross » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

vladimirralev wrote: post #27

Good time to remind everybody that the Fed, the US central bank, prices gold at $42.22 for some reason and nobody questions it ever. And all those dignified educated respectable board members and econ PhDs give speeches about science-based market economy, maintaining credibility and staying away from politics while caring about the wellbeing of households and families.

That's wildly misunderstanding things. The fed doesn't trade, regulate, hold or sell gold. That price you're quoting is for a historical artifact called a Gold Certificate. These things have a value set by law (not by the fed) of 42 and 2/9th dollars. They don't sell them anymore, but if you happen to have one they're required to buy it from you (IIRC) at that rate.

As always, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_certificate_(United_State...

Re: Gold hits all time high

#47

Post by grafmax » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

m101 wrote: post #22

The drivers of this in my view are: 1) flight from USD assets given views that one cannot depend on US assets as safe havens 2) central banks increasing gold holdings 3) purchases by Chinese investors as they have few places to invest their money 4) concern around debt levels deficits and democratic process ability to fix this 5) concerns around central bank independence, and hence inflation targeting, being undermin…

> and democratic process ability to fix this

Actually we’ve shifted into authoritarianism and confidence has only worsened.

Re: Gold hits all time high

#48

Post by keiferski » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #30

snickerbockers wrote: post #19

What is it about gold, anyways? None of its useful properties were known until recently (and mostly overhyped and upsold tbh, at least as far as those stupid cables go). Are we really just instinctively attracted to shiny metals? Or do people like it as a status symbol? (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 o…

What is it about Bitcoin over the thousands of other altcoins that have the exact same properties? A large enough group of people picked Bitcoin and said "this is the one". That's basically it. Same thing happened with gold at some point in human history and we just stuck to it.

Both gold and bitcoin also ostensibly have no real founder / owner. Most other alt coins are run by a particular organization with its own interests.

Re: Gold hits all time high

#49

Post by MichaelDickens » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #25

Gold, silver, stocks, real estate, Bitcoin, baseball cards, fine art, Rolexes - everything is trading at or near their all time highs. The value of the US dollar is simply going down.

Those things are trading high relative to basic goods like food and clothing, so you can't explain it away as inflation.

Re: Gold hits all time high

#50

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #25

Gold, silver, stocks, real estate, Bitcoin, baseball cards, fine art, Rolexes - everything is trading at or near their all time highs. The value of the US dollar is simply going down.

Fiat money is not going down as much as asset prices are going up, though.

So it's part of the story, money losing value in the real economy. That's been happening since moving off the gold standard at roughly similar rates.

There's something that happened during ZIRP & Negative Real Interest Rate Policies that completely divorced the value of money in the real economy from the value of assets & future cash flows, and even when interest rates became positive again, the trend appears to have continued.

Perhaps all investors just believe ZIRP & Negative Real Interest Rate Policies are coming back, maybe to even more negative real rates than ever before.