Gold Price Records Show Investors See It As the Ultimate Safe Haven

Gold is trouncing other assets in 2025.

The precious metal’s record-setting year is a sign that investors—racked by uncertainty over tariffs, the economy, and inflation—see it as a place to hide while the broader market stumbles.

The price of the precious metal rallied again on Tuesday, with gold climbing as high as $3,506 at midday Tuesday, notching yet another fresh record.

The metal has soared 28% this year, crushing the performance of the S&P 500, which is down 9% year-to-date.

Part of that seems to be because investors have soured on other so-called safe-haven assets — places where traders have typically sought safety amid wild swings in the market.

Bitcoin, which was billed as “digital gold” and a hedge against inflation has broadly tracked other risk assets since 2022, when the token lost 67% of its value even as inflation soared past 9%.

Even US Treasurys — nearly risk-free assets backed by the US government — haven’t been stable amid the market’s gyrations.

That’s partly due to Donald Trump’s politics, with trade policy and threats from the president to potentially fire the Fed Chair sparking a flight from US haven trades.

With more traditional inflation hedges and safety plays seeing diminished appeal, investors increasingly see gold as the safest place to be — and that doesn’t look likely to end anytime soon, according to Michael Brown, a senior research strategist at Pepperstone.

“As that desire to trim US exposure increases, gold remains the only real haven offering shelter from the storm, with the yellow metal continuing to shine,” Brown wrote in a note on Monday. “I remain a gold bull here, with the ‘barbarous relic’ still having the best prospects of any asset for the time being, most obviously due to its relative immunity from the whims of President Trump’s social media account.”

Rania Fule, a senior market analyst at XS.com, echoed that sentiment.

“From a fundamental perspective, I expect gold to remain supported in the near term, as markets still lack strong economic catalysts from the US, leaving prices vulnerable to shifts in investor sentiment and political headlines,” Fule wrote on Monday. “It reflects a deeper, escalating state of global uncertainty that continues to dominate financial markets.”

Wall Street forecasters have also been setting ever-higher price targets for the precious metal.

Goldman Sachs lifted its forecast for gold earlier this month, predicting the precious metal could climb to $3,700 by the end of the year.

Ed Yardeni, a market veteran and president of Yardeni Research, said in a note last week that he believed gold could climb as high as $4,000 by the end 2025 and hit $5,000 by the end of 2026, in part due to strong demand from central banks, which have stepped up purchases in their efforts to diversify reserves away from the dollar.