Less than a week after breaking through the $2,900 per ounce barrier, gold has surpassed $3,000 per ounce, driven mainly by growing economic uncertainty.
The S&P 500 has entered correction territory, falling more than 10 percent from its recent highs as fears of a slowdown grip the markets, with persistent inflation and sluggish growth fueling fears of stagflation.
Trade tensions have risen again, with highly vacillating tariff threats (including a 200 percent tariff on European wines and spirits) fueling uncertainty and shaking global supply chains.
Meanwhile, the growing rift in political and military ties between the United States and Europe has exacerbated market instability, as diplomatic fractures raise concerns about the future of transatlantic cooperation. Against a backdrop of turbulence, investors are once again flocking to gold as the ultimate safe-haven asset, driving prices to record highs.
For 5,000 years, gold has been the cornerstone of economic trade, a constant in the ever-shifting sands of monetary history.
Era after era, it has been dismissed as an obsolete relic, denigrated by policymakers, marginalized by financial engineers and declared obsolete by the architects of fiat money, only to re-emerge with a quiet, unshakable resilience when men's grand designs collapse under their own weight.
Time and again its eulogies have been written, its relevance has been declared dead, but today it is back at the center of the monetary and fiscal universe, not by decree, but by the sheer gravity of economic reality.
Central banks, which once shunned gold, are now buying it at an unprecedented rate, seeking refuge in the very systems they helped create.