The flight toward gold has coincided with a depreciation in the value of the U.S. dollar. Its value against other currencies plunged about 11% over the first half of 2025, the biggest decline in more than 50 years, a Morgan Stanley report in August found.
The decline in the U.S. dollar's value reflects a shift away from global dependence on the dollar as a global reserve currency, as investors take note of changes in U.S. economic policy and Trump's pressure campaign against the Fed, analysts said.
"Investors are getting nervous about all the traditionally safe U.S. assets like treasury securities," Pasquariello said. "Where else will they put money? Gold."

When prices are high and global conflicts destabilize the world, some investors start looking backwards—and what’s older and more dependable than gold?
Last week, amid widespread geopolitical turmoil and a weakening U.S. dollar, the price of gold hit a historic high of $4,000 an ounce. This year has so far been gold’s best since 1979, a moment of instability so profound that it led to recession.
Over the past 50 years, spikes in the price of gold have typically been correlated with widespread inflation and geopolitical dysfunction. The precious metal has long been considered a safe-haven asset, because, unlike the U.S. dollar, its inherent value isn’t determined by any state government.
Some investors see gold as a standard way to diversify their portfolio. Others, stereotypically known as goldbugs, tend to be broadly skeptical about contemporary monetary policy. Just as investors in bitcoin, so-called digital gold, have historically skewed libertarian and anti-institutional, the most extreme goldbugs are betting against the system, doubtful that the Federal Reserve is capable of keeping the U.S. dollar strong.
Gold prices have already risen more than 50 percent this year and are showing no signs of stopping. The story of today’s gold boom began in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Western governments decided to sanction the Russian central bank by freezing its foreign-exchange reserves. The scale of these sanctions was a reminder of why countries might want to own assets that can’t be easily frozen. Especially in emerging markets, central banks around the world “realized that the truly only safe asset” is gold.
The other main driver of this price spike is less abstract. Some Wall Streeters are concerned that the value of the U.S. dollar will continue to erode as the national debt climbs and the Federal Reserve loses its grip on the currency. They’re making what’s become known as the “Debasement Trade,” shifting money away from the weakening U.S. dollar and into harder, more independent assets such as gold and bitcoin. Shrinkflation, stagflation, good-old-fashioned inflation—all of it means that your paycheck doesn’t go as far as it once did, and all of it is good for gold.
The mystery of the current gold rally is that the S&P 500 is also up. The stock-market index reached an all-time high earlier this month, which would seem to suggest that the American economy isn’t quite as close to the brink as the price of gold might indicate.
But the reality probably has to do with a bifurcated market. Vanguard’s global chief economist told The New York Times on Saturday that this rare case of gold and stocks moving in a parallel upward trend has to do with “dramatically different” investor perspectives: The optimists are going with equities, and the pessimists are going with gold. In today’s economy, there’s room enough for both.

In China, the longest ultrahigh-voltage power line stretches more than 2,000 miles from the far northwest to the populous southeast — the equivalent of transmitting electricity from Idaho to New York City.
The power line starts in a remote desert in northwest China, where vast arrays of solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity on a monumental scale. It snakes southeast, following an ancient river between mountain ranges before reaching Anhui Province near Shanghai, home to 61 million people and some of China’s most successful electric car and robot manufacturers.
That’s a single power line. China has 41 others. Each is capable of carrying more electricity than any utility transmission line in the United States. That’s partly because China is using technology that makes its lines far more efficient than almost anywhere else in the world.
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Beijing’s expansion of its power grid contrasts sharply with President Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” approach of doubling down on fossil fuels and rolling back federal programs to spur greater use of clean energy.
In July, the Energy Department terminated its commitment to provide a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for construction of the Grain Belt Express power line to take wind power from Kansas to cities in Illinois and Indiana. That 800-mile ultrahigh-voltage line, which would have covered a shorter distance than dozens of lines already built in China, ran into criticism from rural landowners and Republican lawmakers.
Many of China’s ultrahigh-voltage lines use direct current technology, which allows them to carry electricity for long distances with barely any of the transmission losses that affect most high-power lines in other countries.
China’s more efficient power lines have broad consequences for the global race against climate change. They will help determine how quickly China can reduce its world-leading use of coal, a stain on the country’s clean energy track record. China uses as much coal as the entire rest of the world, and emits more greenhouse gases than the United States and the European Union combined.
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China already consumes twice as much electricity as the United States. By 2050, China plans to triple its count of ultrahigh-voltage routes. The most recent public Chinese data, from the end of 2024, showed 19 lines transmitting power at 800 kilovolts. Another 22 lines operated at 1,000 kilovolts. One of them, the behemoth terminating in Guquan, transmits enough electricity at 1,100 kilovolts to power more than seven million American households or 40 million to 50 million Chinese households.
To put the scale of China’s power grid build out in perspective, consider that the United States has a handful of 765-kilovolt lines and a few running at 500 kilovolts or less. The 765-kilovolt lines together total about 2,000 miles — the length of a single line across China.
Construction of the power lines has helped China reduce its emissions of toxic air pollution and greenhouse gases. A University of Chicago analysis of satellite data, released in August, found that air pollution in China had plunged 41 percent since 2014. That added almost two years to the country’s average life expectancy.

I got hit on several fronts at that time. As a major player in that space, the company that I worked for (a spinoff) had issued us stock options. I also participated in the discounted ESPP. And had some company stock in my 401K, as well. The stock options evaporated, along with most of the ESPP and 401K company stock holdings.
A lot of older folks got it worse, they kept buying more as the stock slid to 1/10 of its market high. Then came the layoffs. We went from 120K employees to about 35K IIRC. The good news was that I kept my job. Two mergers later, I am still with them. Now a multinational with over 100K employees again. It has been a wild ride!

The SEC alleged that the Milwaukee-based investment firm failed to properly price the value of some bonds in the Short Duration High-Yield Municipal Fund and the High-Yield Municipal Bond Fund in 2000. The funds had invested primarily in non-rated medium- and lower-quality municipal bonds. When projects underlying some bonds held by the funds went into default and other projects were failing, Heartland didn't accurately re-price the funds to reflect the lower valuations, the SEC said. The net asset value of the high-yield fund plummeted 69.4% in one day, and the short-duration fund fell 44%.

For risk-adverse clients, we recommend that five years of withdrawal money initially be placed in Bucket #1. Stocks, as represented by CCM’s Quality Growth Program, have always reached a new high within five years of refilling Bucket #1. For clients willing to accept a little more risk, we believe the allocation of just three or four years of withdrawal money to Bucket #1 to be appropriate.

I would invest in OTIS just for their escalator's innate ability to detect integrity (or lack thereof) at their UN installation.

Joshua Brown is Cofounder & CEO of the wealth management firm Ritholtz. He also posts on social-media and has podcasts, but he isn't a journalist or economist by education or training.
https://www.ritholtzwealth.com/