Gold News

Trump's Fresh Gold Price Records Extend Profit-Taking by Investors

But gold investing draws new buyers too...
 
NEW YEAR 2025 is bringing a wave of new investing into physical gold, writes Adrian Ash at world-leading marketplace BullionVault.
 
But existing owners across Western markets continue to trim their holdings, taking profit as a group as the 'safe haven' asset hits fresh all-time gold highs on Donald Trump's return to the White House.
 
BullionVault gained more than twice the number of first-time users this January than it did 12 months before. But overall, its customers ended the month owning a little less gold for the 16th month in the past 17.
 
The price of gold continued to rise much faster than investors sold. That raised the value of client gold investment – all securely vaulted and insured in each customer's choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or Zurich – by 7.4% to a new record near $4.0 billion (up 8.6% to £3.2bn, 7.9% to €3.8bn, 5.9% to ¥615bn).
 
This extends the pattern of 2024, when record-heavy profit taking by BullionVault users still left their vaulted gold holdings dramatically higher by value. Trump's trade tariffs are just the latest crisis to spur fresh record highs in gold investing prices.
 
Indeed, the precious metal has doubled or more for Western investors since the pandemic began five years ago.
 
Yet rather than rushing for the exits above $2800 per ounce...
 
...or £2250 or €2700 or even ¥14,000 per gram...
 
...rich-world investors as a group continue to take only a little profit net-net from gold.
 
That leaves the bulk of their gold allocation rising in value as a hedge against the new risks and volatility which 2025 has already brought.
 
Chart of the Gold Investor Index, past 15 years. Source: BullionVault
 
Using BullionVault's low-cost and award-winning platform, the number of investors choosing to start or add to their personal holdings of securely stored gold bullion edged 3.7% higher last month from December's figure.
 
But the number of sellers leapt by 61.5%, hitting a 3-month high with the fastest jump since March.
 
Together that knocked the Gold Investor Index down 1.6 points to 52.7, the lowest reading since September and 2.4 points below the near-18 month high hit amid Trump's clean sweep of November's US elections.
 
Tracking the number of buyers versus sellers on BullionVault each month since 2009, the Gold Investor Index set a decade peak at 65.9 as the Covid pandemic went global in March 2020. It then set a series low at 47.5 in March last year, signalling more sellers than buyers for only the 3rd time ever with a reading below 50. 
 
Helping stem the index's drop was further strength in the number of first-time buyers. January 2025 saw the count of people opening a BullionVault account to buy securely stored and insured gold, silver, platinum or palladium more than double from 2024's exceptionally weak start (up 117.4%). And compared to the 2024 month-average, new account openings ran 40.8% ahead worldwide, led by a rise of 56.0% in the UK compared to the prior 12 months, 64.3% in Germany, and 66.9% in the Netherlands.
 
France eased back, in contrast, slipping 11.9% from last year's average monthly pace as its political crisis took a pause between Prime Minister Barnier's resignation and the forthcoming austerity budget.
 
The USA remained quiet as Donald Trump retook the White House following November's decisive election win, with the number of first-time US bullion buyers dropping 20.9% versus 2024's monthly average to the fewest since June.
 
Silver holdings on BullionVault meanwhile ended January unchanged from December's 3-month high by weight, rising 7.3% by Dollar value to the highest since October above $1.1bn (up 8.9% to £947m, 8.0% to €1.1bn, 5.7% to ¥181bn) as silver prices also jumped like gold, albeit to only 7-week highs at the end of last month.
 
Investors as a group chose to sell silver, with sellers outnumbering buyers across the month and pulling the Silver Investor Index down by 3.0 points to 49.7, its 5th sub-50 reading of the past 12 months.
 
The spectre of profit-taking, in short, continues to stalk the surging price of precious metals. But those prices continue to rise much faster than investors are choosing to sell.
 

Adrian Ash

Adrian Ash, BullionVault Gold News

Adrian Ash is director of research at BullionVault, the world-leading physical gold, silver, platinum and palladium market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and he has now been researching and writing daily analysis of precious metals and the wider financial markets for over 20 years. A frequent guest on BBC radio and television, Adrian is regularly quoted by the Financial Times, MarketWatch and many other respected news outlets, and his views from inside the bullion market have been sought by the Economist magazine, CNBC, Bloomberg, Germany's Handelsblatt and FAZ, plus Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore.

See the full archive of Adrian Ash articles on GoldNews.

  

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