Worldwide Financial Planning

In 2025, Central banks emerged as the world’s most consistent gold buyers, purchasing over 1,000 tonnes per year since 2022. According to the World Gold Council, 2024 alone saw a record 1,045 tonnes added to official reserves. This isn’t about profit. It is about sovereignty, which I explained in my recent long series on the ‘end of the dollar’.

Weakness in US and global tech stocks had been weighing on equity markets around the world as investors worry about whether the astonishing amount of investment in artificial intelligence, and the infrastructure needed to support its growth, will pay off.

By the time gold reaches its excitable high, much of what makes it appealing is already reflected in the price. What lifts it further is not new information, but investor emotion.

The US has also felt the effect of unintended consequences as the bitter divisions which caused the government shutdown seem to have dented consumer confidence in the run-up to the key holiday shopping season. Any downturn in activity may turn out to be fleeting, as was the case with the UK last year, but it is a good example of how short-term political expediency can trump our national long-term interests.

There's an old line I once heard from a retired trawlerman and, oddly enough, from a nervous investor in the same week: “When the sky turns black, you don’t debate the charts, you head for the lighthouse.” In a market storm, when headlines scream and spreadsheets freeze, some things are meant to just work. Gold, for many, is/was that lighthouse.

Unless you are a furloughed government employee or you had planned to visit US national parks or museums, the immediate effect of a shutdown may be hard to see. But the longer the shutdown drags on the more problems become apparent.