Gold Investing Jumps as Trump Chaos Deepens
Tuesday, 3/04/2025 11:20
Most new bullion buyers in nearly 4 years...
GOLD INVESTING has leapt as Trump 2.0 delivers exactly the policy chaos which the new President promised in the US election,
writes Adrian Ash at world-leading precious metals marketplace BullionVault.
The safe haven's latest surge to new record prices is seeing sentiment, demand and new accounts openings jump to multi-year highs on BullionVault, taking the value of securely-stored gold owned by investors using our 24/7 service above $4.0 billion for the first time (£3.2bn, €3.8bn, ¥606bn).
With the number of new investors rising last month to the highest count since May 2021, the total number of people starting or adding to their gold holdings on BullionVault rose 33.6% from January's figure, while the number of people selling gold across the month fell 17.0% despite gold's new record prices offering fresh profits.
Together that raised the
Gold Investor Index by 3.6 points – the strongest rise in 10 months – to 56.3, its highest reading since October 2022.
The Gold Investor Index tracks the balance of gold buyers versus sellers each month, starting in 2009. It set a decade peak of 65.9 in March 2020 when the Covid pandemic went global, and it fell to a record low of 47.5 last March as gold's rising price spurred heavy profit-taking by existing owners.
Any reading above 50.0 would signal that the number of buyers perfectly matched the number of sellers across the month.
What's spurring this jump?
Western investors are joining emerging-market central banks in buying gold as an all-weather hedge. Traders in all markets are now watching Truthsocial more closely than monetary policy.
Volatility is also helping. Gold prices swung around 6% in all major currencies last month, offering longer-term holders the chance to book a profit before buying the dip alongside new investors.
Priced in the Dollar,
gold set 10 new record high prices in February, matching the count of September 2011 – peak of the 'safe haven' metal's global financial crisis bull market – with the most since October 1978's record monthly count of 12.
In Euro and UK Pound terms, gold also continued its run of new all-time highs, extending
2024's record count of new gold price highs in terms of those currencies.
BullionVault finds 9-in-10 its 110,000 customers in Western Europe and North America. From here in Hammersmith, West London, our regular investor surveys say that BullionVault users typically hold four-fifths of their investable wealth in other assets besides precious metals. New Year 2025's survey showed that
geopolitics now tops the list of gold price drivers, overtaking monetary policy for the first time since Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.
New users funding their account last month to buy bullion for the first time rose 22.4% from January's count and jumped 62.5% from its 12-month average to the biggest figure since May 2021.
That was led by the UK (up 80.9% from its 12-month average to the most since March 2021), Germany (up 89.3% to the most since March 2022) and the USA (up 137.4% to the most since April 2023).
So the upturn in European gold buyers
which we've seen and reported since the eve of the US election in October continues spreading to US investors, but from a lower base historically.
Also note that, worldwide, this jump in bullion demand remains far from a gold rush right now. While February brought the most first-time buyers to BullionVault in almost four years, that number was less than half the peak of either the Covid Crisis in August 2020 or the global financial crisis in September 2011, when gold's then-record prices set what proved to be a longer-term top.
By weight in February, and net of customer profit-taking, BullionVault's 24/7 marketplace witnessed the strongest gold investor demand since June 2023 at 0.2 tonnes.
More than reversing January's net outflow, that demand saw the total quantity of BullionVault clients' gold – all securely stored and insured in specialist warehouses in each user's choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or Zurich – rise to a 3-month high above 44.1 tonnes. Up 0.4% from January's 4.5-year low, client gold holdings increased 1.1% to the 9th new all-time record of the past 12 months, rising above $4.0 billion for the first time.
After falling below 50.0 in January to signal more sellers than buyers for the 5th time in 12 months, the Silver Investor Index rose 2.2 points to read 51.9 in February.
By weight, however, BullionVault users were net sellers of silver, cutting their holdings as a group for the first time in 4 months and liquidating almost 5 tonnes as the more industrially-useful precious metal set new month-average records in UK Pounds, Euros and most other non-US currencies. That took total client holdings down 0.4% by weight to 1,151 tonnes worth $1.1bn (£915m, €1.1bn, ¥173bn).
Precious metals investing, in other words, currently favors the safe haven of gold over the industrial-growth story of silver. But while that matches the geopolitical and economic outlook as Trump 2.0 turns eight decades of Western military and trading alliances on their head, investor sentiment is positive towards both precious metals as they trade at new all-time record prices.
Email us
