An attendant holds 1-kilogram gold bars on Feb. 17, 2025.
Akos Stiller/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Gold prices crossed $3,000 an ounce for the first time, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs against major trading partners roil financial markets and push investors to safe-haven assets to protect against elevated inflation and a possible recession.
Gold futures have soared nearly 14% so far this year and hit a fresh intraday all-time high of $3,017.1 an ounce on Friday, before pulling back to about $2,995. The latest move has come as the U.S. stock market lost $5 trillion in three weeks as Trump’s trade war stirs turmoil, confusion and uncertainty.
Some 52% of global fund managers told Bank of America in a survey that they view gold as “the best hedge against a full-blown trade war.”
“The Trump administration issuing a slew of tariff threats and the realigning of international relationships have added a new layer of macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, providing a significant boost to gold,” David Wilson, senior commodities strategist at BNP Paribas markets told clients in a note this week.
Gold’s rally above $3,000 is the metal’s third most significant bull market in modern history, Daniel Ghali, senior commodity strategist at TD Securities, told clients in a note on Friday. Macroeconomic funds have been the main catalyst behind gold’s recent runup, Ghali said.
“Macro funds still have scope to add to their purchase, but their wallets are not infinitely deep,” Ghali said. “Still, the cards are stacked for the bigger picture macro set-up to persist in the medium-term.”
Global central banks have also helped fuel gold’s rally, adding to their precious metal reserves as an alternative to the U.S. dollar and Treasurys since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Governments still worry that Washington could use the dollar, the world’s reserve currency, as a weapon after Russian assets were frozen in response to the invasion.
Central banks purchased 18 metric tons of gold in January, with the People’s Bank of China reporting its third consecutive month of net buying, according to the World Gold Council. Central banks added 1,045 metric tons to global gold reserves last year, a council report said, the third year in a row that purchases topped 1,000 tons.
