It’s 2025 — do you know what your money is worth? There are a lot of things vexing the economy right now. The government shutdown, high federal debt levels, divided politics, trade and tariff pressures, geopolitical tensions, and the list goes on.
Investors are worried about a stock market bubble. Consumers are worried about inflation and the rising cost of living. And everyone is worried about the general sense of economic uncertainty.
According to the World Economic Forum “uncertainty” is the watchword of the day. 82% of economists consider “uncertainty” to be very high and an even higher number believe that unsteady trade, fiscal and monetary policy have paralyzed economic decision-making significantly raising recession risks.[1]
It is within this cauldron of doubt, distrust and skepticism that precious metals shine brightest.
The Year-to-Date Metals Rally
Gold has long been viewed as a chaos hedge, crisis insurance and an economic safe haven. For gold bugs and enthusiasts, it shines brightly when everything else turns dim and dark. They believe gold has intrinsic and inherent value that is not assigned or bestowed. It is a coveted and prized and has been for thousands of years.
Rising gold prices have long been considered to be negatively correlated to ‘bad times,’ so when the precious metal surges economists and analysts take notice. Indeed, The Atlantic is calling the size and scope of the current gold rush downright “ominous.”
“Gold prices are much closer to a genuine ‘recession indicator’ than, say, the resurgence of frozen yogurt or an uptick in Uber Eats orders. That’s because, over the past 50 years, spikes in the price of gold have typically been correlated with widespread inflation and geopolitical dysfunction. In 1979, amid double-digit inflation numbers in the United States and a global energy crisis, investors stocked up on the precious metal as a way to counter those shocks.”[2]
But what does it mean when silver, platinum and palladium also rise? During times of economic volatility, all precious metals are a popular alternative to traditional assets. They offer portfolio diversification, liquidity, and significant growth opportunities. But silver, platinum and palladium are also influenced by increased industrial demand which creates an added supply squeeze that can lead to even higher prices.
Case in point, while gold is up over 55% year-to-date, silver is up over 60%, platinum is up over 66% and palladium is up over 56%.
New Inflation Concerns
And amid all of the current uncertainty, inflation has been what they called “sticky” and persistent. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) report which was due October 15th, has been delayed until October 24th in light of the government shutdown. But it is expected to show that inflation is not going anywhere and may actually be making a comeback.
“The CPI rose faster during the summer, hitting its largest increase so far this year in August, coming in higher than economists expected. Core CPI, which excludes more volatile food and energy prices, also hit its highest level this year over both July and August … Overall, economists foresee that inflation rose by 0.4% month over month in September, and 3.1% from year-ago levels. Core inflation will likely have risen 0.3% by month and 3.1% annually in September, according to data from FactSet.”[3]
U.S. CPI inflation rate in 2025 by month:
- August: 2.9%
- July: 2.7%
- June: 2.7%
- May: 2.4%
- April: 2.3%
- March: 2.4%
- February: 2.8%
- January: 3%[4]
In addition, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management just announced the results of its quarterly retail investor survey and inflation concerns dominate.
“While nearly half of investors expect inflation to moderate this quarter (47%), it continues to be their top concern (45%), rising six percentage points from last quarter and the top concern for every quarter in 2025. Tariffs (33%) and market volatility (21%) remain the top two and three concerns, respectively.”
It is interesting to note that bullishness also fell a full 5% from last quarter and more investors believe the Fed will cuts interest rates again this month.
What’s Keeping Investors Up at Night?
But investor angst is perhaps most fueled by the fallout of highly speculative behavior, irrational exuberance, and unsustainable share price increases. Alas, two of the most terrifying words for traders, portfolio managers and brokers are: ‘market bubble’.
Market bubbles not only collapse suddenly and violently — but they can wipe out billions of dollars in wealth in mere hours. The concept of a “a bubble” is fairly new with the term becoming widespread only in recent decades. Nobel Prize economist Robert Shiller, worked to exclusively define and diagnose bubbles. In his book “Irrational Exuberance,” Shiller likens spotting a bubble to diagnosing a mental illness, using a checklist of symptoms.
- Sharp increase in prices: Strong short-term performance.
- Overvaluation: Prices far exceed their historical norms or fundamental value.
- Popular stories justifying price action: Compelling narratives, like “new era” thinking.
- Tales of significant earnings: Get-rich-quick promises.
- Envy and regret among those not invested: Fear of missing out (FOMO).
- Media frenzy: High attention, constant reminders of the investment[5]
Some of the most infamous asset bubbles include of course the periods of excessive speculation leading up to The Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Japanese economic bubble of the late 1980s, the Dot.Com crash of the 1990s, and the Housing Bubble and collapse of 2007-2009.
But the massive capital flow and speculation of the current AI bubble may very well eclipse all of the over-hyped valuations and market froth of the past. Indeed, warnings have come from the IMF, the Bank of England, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and even OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
And according to the Harvard Business Review, their worries are well-founded.
“The parallels with earlier bubbles are striking. During the dot-com era, capital flooded into telecom infrastructure, betting on exponential internet demand. When that demand lagged, bankruptcies cascaded across the sector. The problem was not that the internet lacked potential, but that the timing of capital deployment outpaced adoption. Today, we see similar signals. Market concentration reached alarming levels: the ‘Magnificent Seven’ technology firms account for more than one-third of the S&P 500, a level twice as high as that of the top tech companies during the 2000 bubble. Valuations for AI companies are based on aggressive projections rather than current earnings. Complex deal structures, such as OpenAI’s financing through vendor agreements, resemble the circularity of past bubbles. Meanwhile, vast sums are being committed to data centers, chip supply chains, and foundational models even as enterprise adoption proceeds more cautiously than consumer enthusiasm.”[6]
So, with the global economy exceedingly fragile, the question of a massive market correction looms quite large. And if we consider the fast, furious and historic rise of precious metals — one can reasonably conclude that is gold, silver, platinum and palladium are indeed trying to tell us something.
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Notes on the Precious Metals Performance Chart:
Endpoints reflect reported YTD moves as of Oct 21, 2025: Gold ~+52% Forbes, Silver ~+68% Investopedia, Platinum ~+74.5% MarketWatch, Palladium ~+56% Strategic Metals Invest.The lines between start and end are interpolated to visualize the comparison (not actual daily paths).
[1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/05/wef-chief-economists-outlook-tariffs/
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/10/gold-rush-inflation-high-prices/684560/
[3] https://www.morningstar.com/economy/cpi-report-expected-show-continued-inflation
[4] https://www.thestreet.com/fed/bank-of-america-resets-inflation-prediction-ahead-of-cpi
[5] https://russellinvestments.com/content/ri/us/en/insights/russell-research/2024/05/bursting-the-myth-understanding-market-bubbles.html
[6] https://hbr.org/2025/10/is-ai-a-boom-or-a-bubble
