Gold Price Sets Strongest Quarter in 4 Decades as Trump Sinks Stocks Again
Monday, 3/31/2025 14:25
GOLD PRICES surged to yet more fresh record highs in all major currencies on Monday, setting up for the best quarterly advance in over 38 years in US Dollar terms as global stocks tumbled after a weekend of trade-tariff and Ukraine-Russia warnings from President Trump,
writes Atsuko Whitehouse at BullionVault.
Declaring himself "angry" with Russia's President Putin whilst also threatening "big, big problems" for Ukraine's President Zelenskyy, "You'd start with all countries," Trump told reporters about
the 'Liberation Day' import duties he promises to unveil on Wednesday, rather than only targeting those nations with the biggest trade surpluses against the USA.
This contradicted both Trump's own hint of concessions for some nations last week and also Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's stated focus on the "dirty 15" – meaning that percentage of the world's economies which applies substantial tariff and other trade barriers to US exports, and which together account for "a huge amount of our trading volume."
"The [tariff] announcements keep on changing, but what they have in common is that it's just not good for growth globally," says Charles De Boissezon, global head of equity strategy at French bank Societe Generale.
"[This] continues to boost gold's appeal," says Daniel Hynes, senior commodities strategist at Australasian bank ANZ.
With the US stock market already on track for its worst calendar quarter since the inflation-crash of Q3 2022, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 tumbled more than 4.0% to its lowest level in over 6 months while Europe’s Stoxx 600 index was down 1.8% by Monday lunch-time.
Physical bullion in contrast jumped as much as 1.4% to set a fresh all-time high of $3127 per Troy ounce in London after recording
the 19th new daily gold price record of 2025 to date at Friday afternoon's benchmarking auction.
The yellow metal rose 1.9% last week to trade 17.7% higher across the first quarter of 2025.
That puts it on track register the sharply quarterly price rise since the third quarter of 1986, when gold surged by more than 22% amid a slowdown in global economic growth following the previous year's Plaza Accord, implemented to weaken the strong Dollar by raising interest rates in other major economies.
Gold bullion has risen by 10% or more in only four quarters in the past 10 years, including this one.
Outside gold, "The fear of new announcements as early as Wednesday are creating a bleak atmosphere on trading floors worldwide," says another stock market analyst.
Crude oil rose 0.4% on Monday, extending last week's 2.0% rise for Brent futures – the European benchmark – after Trump announced a secondary tariff on countries that import crude oil or petroleum products from Venezuela.
That's something he also threatened to apply to buyers of Russian energy, because he is "pissed off" with Vladimir Putin for foot-dragging in talks over a ceasefire with Ukraine.
The
price of silver, primarily an industrial metal, meantime edged lower to $34.09 per Troy ounce, erasing an earlier 0.9% gain on what some posters on social-media are calling #silversqueezeday in an attempt to replay
the #silversqueeze meme of early 2021 which briefly pushed prices higher.
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