Global Gold Stockpiling Continues as Prices Hit Record-Highs - Report

For years, governments have slowly retreated from investing in the US dollar, shifting their assets into other currencies, penning agreements to use local currencies instead of dollars for trade, or buying up stable liquid assets like gold - a trend labeled “de-dollarization” by observers.

Nations around the world are continuing to buy up large quantities of gold amid a monthslong conflict in the Middle East, although the trend dates to before the beginning of the crisis. The scramble has driven bullion prices to their highest ever recorded.

The latest numbers from the World Gold Council have revealed that nations purchased a net weight of 42 tons of gold bullion in October, which is not the largest monthly amount ever, but well above the average. The month prior, nations bought up nearly twice that volume - 72 tons.

Continuing a monthslong trend, the single largest gold buyer was the People’s Bank of China, which bought 23 tons of gold in October, its 12th consecutive month of swelling its reserves. Turkiye was another major buyer, with its central bank buying up 19 tons of gold bullion. The other nations that purchased gold did so in modest amounts by comparison, just one or two tons each.

The news comes days after gold prices spiked to their highest since the early 1980s.

On December 4, the price of a Troy ounce of gold bullion hit $2,110, the culmination of a two-month-long increase in gold prices triggered by a sudden rise in global instability. Early October saw not only the devastating war between Israel and Hamas break out, but it was also the first time the US Congress had ever removed a Speaker of the House from that position - an event that set in motion a three-week-long period of chaos in which the American legislature handled no other business, including passing the essential budget bills put on hold in the advent of the crisis.

While the US House of Representatives has since selected a new Speaker, the central budget issues have yet to be resolved, and the war in Gaza has continued to rage, triggering global condemnations of Israel and an international movement to boycott companies based in Israel or that do business there. One boycott target, Starbucks, has suffered a $12 billion loss in value since early October.