After Iran, gold is looking less glittery (The Economist, 30 mars 2026) ▻https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/03/30/after-iran-gold-is-looking-less-glittery
In the fortnight to March 20th Turkey sold $8bn-worth of gold to prop up the lira. India may be doing something similar. The governor of Poland’s central bank recently mused about locking in some of the profits from the run-up to help bankroll defence spending. Other such opportunistic divestments would explain some of the latest drop.
Yet neither rising real yields nor central banks’ sales fully explain gold’s recent behaviour. Another explanation of what is going on with gold is to think of it as becoming like the asset that was meant to replace it. Bitcoin was once heralded as “digital gold”—a haven protecting investors against inflation and profligate governments, and insulated from the long arm of Uncle Sam. Instead it developed the unfortunate habit of trading in line with the market’s basest, speculative animal spirits.
Now gold, too, is looking like a meme trade. Its rise, by some 60% between last summer and late February, coincided with a boom in gold exchange-traded funds. These increased their holdings by 25% in the past year, to around 4,200 tonnes. Its fall is being accelerated by some of those speculative bets being rapidly unwound.