Gold shows its mettle as a safe haven at last

Gold has proved its worth as a safe haven, gaining 9% since the start of the year and recently finishing its best quarter in nearly two years.

Worker pouring molten gold into moulds
Gold is attractive when inflation is hotting up
(Image credit: © Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“With the bond market unhinged and equities pretending that all is well,” precious metals “look like the cleanest shirts in the dirty laundry basket,” says Przemyslaw Radomski on Investing. Gold has proved its worth as a safe haven, gaining 9% since the start of the year and recently finishing its best quarter in nearly two years. By contrast, government bonds – another traditional safe haven – have endured heavy losses.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.