MW Gold's record-breaking rally could keep running thanks to growing demand from this group of investors

By Myra P. Saefong

U.S. retail investors have only just begun participating in the rally for gold, bullion dealers say

Gold futures touched another record intraday high on Oct. 14, 2025.

Demand for gold among Western investors has climbed in recent months, even as the precious metal notches fresh record highs, but don't say they're late to the party, as rising government debt and strong central-bank purchases look set to continue to feed the rally.

For most of this major rally in gold, which began in March 2024, U.S. investors have been "net sellers of gold and silver, taking profits as metals prices continue to move higher," said Dana Samuelson, president of the American Gold Exchange.

On Tuesday, gold futures were poised to score a fresh record high, with the December contract (GCZ25) (GC00) trading at $4,156.60 an ounce after touching an intraday all-time high of $4,190.90.

With the U.S. economy doing fairly well, inflation moderating and stock indexes hitting record highs, "U.S. investors have been more complacent than most would have expected during this record rally for gold - until now," Samuelson said.

From the perspective of a U.S. gold and silver (SI00) bullion dealer, U.S. retail investors have only just begun participating in the current rally for the two metals as buyers, following the pivot by the Federal Reserve to an interest-rate-cutting cycle in late August, Samuelson said. Once gold moved over $3,700 and silver over $44 in September, U.S. buyers began to re-enter the physical markets in the U.S. "in earnest," and that trend has continued.

Read: The price of silver is on track for a historic breakout. Why it has taken 45 years to get here.

Volume strength

Meanwhile, daily trading volume for gold futures recently climbed to the highest in a year and a half, while the gold-backed SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund GLD saw daily volume rise to a nearly six-month high.

In the U.S., most-active Comex gold futures saw trading volume as high as 448,407 contracts on Oct. 9, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That was the highest since April 12, 2024.

Trading volume for the SPDR Gold Shares ETF also rose to nearly 33.7 million shares on Oct. 9, the highest since April 22, 2025, based on Dow Jones Market Data.

Trading volume for most-active Comex gold futures on Oct. 9 rose to the highest since April 2024.

"The volumes tell you there's conviction, but more importantly, they tell you that both retail and central banks are competing for the same bullion in an environment where mature ETF infrastructure enables sustained flows that were impossible in previous cycles," said Louis LaValle, co-founder and chief executive officer at Frontier Investments.

The ETF infrastructure is significantly more mature than in previous crises, he said. The SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund launched in 2004, and in 2025, "you have frictionless allocation mechanisms that allow capital to flow into gold at speeds that were simply impossible in previous cycles."

That "creates a snowball effect where retail can chase momentum in real time while central banks are simultaneously buying hundreds of [metric tons] annually for structural de-dollarization reasons," said LaValle.

Western investors buy gold ETFs

Gold-backed ETFs also saw monthly inflows from North America topping those from Asia from June to September, according to data from the World Gold Council. That's despite gold's rise to its highest prices on record.

Until recently, Western investors weren't really participating in gold's current rally, at least not as much as had been seen in the past, and that had to do with the "competitiveness of asset class," said Tavi Costa, partner and macroeconomic strategist at Crescat Capital. U.S. equities were doing so well that it was hard to deploy capital to gold, he said. "Now, after a big return in gold over the last few years, it's attracting capital from other fronts."

Read: Why gold's surge shows it's more than just a hedge for the stock market's record run

"This is just the beginning," he said. While most of these Western funds may be in some sort of "dilemma," trying to figure out if they've missed the boat, Costa believes gold "deserves to be multiples of where it is now," and that over the long term, prices can still have a "major run" higher.

"We haven't seen anything [yet] in my view," Costa said, relative to the amount of economic imbalances.

The strength in gold trading volume shows the "profoundness of the imbalances we have worldwide," he said, adding that it's hard to believe that the market will go back to a world where gold was about two months ago, trading around $2,500 an ounce, because a lot of central banks have "shown their cards and their needs to accumulate the metal, and now we're in a situation where it's almost a race to own more of the metal in order to get a to position where you can truly sustain the stability of own fiat currency."

Will Rhind, chief executive officer and founder of GraniteShares, which runs the GraniteShares Gold Trust BAR, said that in a gold bull market such as this one, "a lot of investors may be coming to gold for the first time [who are] not as familiar with the gold landscape as they are with other asset classes." Given that, the majority of investors will buy the SPDR Gold Shares ETF because it's what they know, he said.

Bull-market drivers

Other gold bull cycles saw increased trading volumes and demand, but this time may be different, Rhind said, in that there appears to be no "crisis" in markets.

But gold may be signaling a different type of crisis, one in which "global government debt levels are unsustainable, and the only way out may be currency debasement and/or inflation," he said.

Read: Gold and gold miners suffered a big one-day retreat. Why it's still not time to sell.

American Gold Exchange's Samuelson said the media at large has just recently begun to label and justify the surge in gold price as the "debasement trade." He described U.S. dollar debasement as the loss of purchasing power of the dollar due to financial mismanagement by the U.S. government in the form of excessive debt, $2 trillion deficits and the continued "inability of the U.S. to bring receipts and spending into any sense of balance. "

But attributing gold's strong price gain to the debasement trade "misses the mark," said Samuelson. "This is a global bull market, driven by physical buying the likes of which we have not seen since gold was no longer a currency."

He added: "With persistent inflation eroding real purchasing power, and no end in sight, the precious-metals rally is making many see how gold and silver hold purchasing power compared to fiat currencies that have lost value to tangible assets."

-Myra P. Saefong

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 14, 2025 13:06 ET (17:06 GMT)

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