Ryan Bridge: We're all flocking for gold

Have you seen how much gold is worth lately? Yesterday it hit another new record - US$5000 an ounce. It’s up 60% on last year. If you watch this stuff closely you’ll know it’s not just happened overnight. It’s been building slowly but surely since Trump took office, and investors look for safe places to put their money. People have been worried about the AI bubble bursting, so they out their money into gold instead of stocks. The price skyrockets. But the speed of late has been pretty remarkable. JP Morgan in December predicted the price would hit $5000 by Q4 2026. It’s hit that price in Q1. Goldman Sachs reckons it’ll hit $5400 by year’s end, but at this rate, that might be underselling it too. Honestly, it makes you want to rip off your rings and earrings off and flog them, doesn’t it? One thing’s for sure, at these prices, gold diggers —the prospectors, not the sort Kanye sings about— will be lining up to get the stuff out of the ground quicker than you can say fast-track. Every time the price goes up, so too does the value of those projects. The quicker they can get up and running in places like Otago and Waihi, the better the return for their investors. There’s only around 200 thousand tonnes of gold that’s ever been mined. Mostly since 1950. It’s only enough to fill two or three Olympic swimming pools. Every gold bar in a vault. Every wedding ring. Every necklace. Melted down, doesn’t amount to much. They reckon there’s about 64,000 tonnes remaining underground that's accessible. That makes this a rare and precious metal which will surely become more precious as the world becomes more uncertain.