Gold Records Best Half-Year Gain Since Financial Crisis Began
Monday, 6/30/2025 14:41
GOLD PRICES rebounded from a 1-month low on Monday, heading into the end of June with a gain of more than 25% for US Dollar investments in 2025 so far, the strongest half-year jump for bullion since the start of the global financial crisis almost 2 decades ago,
writes Atsuko Whitehouse at BullionVault.
The Dollar itself fell to new 3-year lows on the currency market, marking a 10% decline across H1 2025 amid investment and business
concerns over President Donald Trump's trade, geopolitical, central-bank independence and economic policies.
After making a 2nd consecutive weekly loss to finish Friday with its lowest London 3pm auction price since the last day of May, spot gold bullion rose 0.2% to $3281 per ounce by lunchtime today.
The 'safe haven' metal has gained 25.7% in the first six months of the year, marking gold's largest half-year increase since July-to-December 2007, onset of the global financial crisis.
In contrast to gold, the Dollar Index – a measure of the US currency's value versus its major peers – fell as much as 0.4% in early trading, down to its lowest level since March 2022 on Monday.
That puts the Dollar's decline at 10.1% over the past half-year, the worst such drop since 1973, when the gold-backed Bretton Woods system broke down entirely, two years after
US President Richard Nixon suspended the Dollar-Gold exchange system.
"The Dollar has become the whipping boy of Trump 2.0's erratic policies," says an FX strategist at Dutch bank ING.
"One key driver that could further hurt the Dollar is the potential surge in fiscal debt stemming from President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill," says a strategist at Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
The US Senate is expected to make a final vote on Trump's $4.5 trillion tax cut proposals today, the last day of 2025's first calendar half.
The Congressional Budget Office
on Sunday estimated that the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' would add $3.3 trillion to Washington's budget deficits over the next decade, on top of the existing $1.3 trillion per year deficit seen this year.
Trump's deadline for re-introducing heavy trade tariffs on foreign imports is meantime scheduled for 9th July, but US officials say negotiations with China and the European Union are progressing while talks with Canada are "back on track" after the country withdrew its digital services tax, easing pressure on the US tech giant platforms.
India's trade negotiations team has extended its stay in Washington to finalize an agreement.
"Recent market developments around tariffs have raised questions on the safe-haven status of US Dollars [and] bolstered that of gold," says one anonymous central bank reserves manager quoted in the latest survey from the mining-industry's World Gold Council.
A record 95% of central-bank respondents expect global central bank gold holdings to increase over the next 12 months, and
a record 43% believe their own reserves will also rise.
Gold priced in Euros and the UK Pounds meantime traded sideways Monday morning at 5-week lows of €2795 and £2392 per Troy ounce respectively, as both currencies strengthened against the US Dollar in the FX markets by 12.5% and 9.1% for the year to date.
European and Asian equities edged lower, while future contracts on US benchmark index the S&P500 rose on Monday, extending last week's new all-time high amid
what analysts call surging 'risk appetite'.
Prices for silver – primarily an industrial metal – edged 0.1% lower to $35.97 per ounce, trimming the gray metal's first-half gain to 24.4% in Dollar terms.
Platinum, which derives two-thirds of its demand from industrial uses (led by auto-catalysts), rose 1.5% to $1361 per ounce, extending its 6-month jump to 49.1%.
Sister metal palladium – which finds over 4/5ths of its end-use demand from auto-catalysts to reduce emissions from gasoline engines – rose 1.5% to $1153 per ounce, on track for a 26.8% increase in H1 2025.
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