The Paris 2024 Olympic Games were quite the spectacle from beginning to end. Not only that, but Team USA also managed to win the medal race – with 126 gold, silver, and bronze medals earned across a wide range of events. Nice!
But when it comes to MARKET PERFORMANCE in 2025, guess which asset is winning the gold medal? It’s...GOLD. Check out this week’s MoneyShow Chart of the Week: A year-to-date chart of gold futures.
Gold Futures (YTD)
Source: Yahoo Finance
You can see that as of this writing, gold was up another $20 an ounce to around $2,493. That’s a fresh all-time high for the yellow metal, and it extends gold’s gain to more than 20% on the year.
That compares to returns of around 2.4% for the iShares Core US Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG), considered the benchmark for US government and corporate bonds...9% for crude oil...11% for the Nasdaq Composite...and just under 12% for the S&P 500.
In fairness, Bitcoin is beating bullion, at plus-39% recently. But many observers don’t (yet) consider Bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general) to be a traditional asset class. Moreover, the performance gap between “real gold” and “digital gold” has been closing fast – with the former holding up much better than the latter during recent market volatility.
What’s driving the gains for gold? All the forces I wrote about in my recent mega-report The Golden Era: 3 Powerful Forces Driving Precious Metals Higher (& How YOU Can Profit!) If you haven’t downloaded your free copy, I recommend you do so. You can also read the “short version” of the bull case here – including how central banks have been buying bullion hand-over-fist, and how investor sentiment trends argue for even greater gains.
I’m not a traditional “gold bug.” There are times I love the metal, times I don’t like it, and times I focus on other assets because they offer more promise and potential.
But I’ve been a staunch bullion bull since H2 2018, and I remain so today. Consider adding more exposure in physical metal, ETFs like the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), mining shares, or other related investment vehicles.