Bad vibes in the economy are making gold a more attractive investment.
Demand for physical gold jumped 13% in the first quarter, according to the World Gold Council.
Gold dealers say clients are worried about the dollar’s decline, a debt crisis, and other scenarios.
Marc Faber, a longtime investor who says his nickname is “Dr. Doom” (not to be confused with this Dr. Doom), has been buying gold for decades and telling other people to stock up for just as long.
The gold bug regularly appears on videos extolling the metal’s virtues while sounding alarms about economic collapse. He’s eyeing a litany of crises coming our way: a debt crisis, a plunge in asset prices, and soaring inflation round out his list of concerns.
“My sense is that a debt crisis is inevitable,” he said, adding that he buys gold regularly, with the metal comprising 25% of his overall portfolio.
Faber’s clients also hold a significant portion of their wealth in gold, but the scramble to own more of the metal that’s helped drive prices higher this year is spreading to more everyday investors.
Blame the bad energy in the economy in 2025, with “soft data” like consumer sentiment and inflation expectations souring even as the economy continues to hold up.
Some of what these buyers are worried about—which, among Faber’s clients range from hyperinflation to the start of World War III—are unlikely. But forecasters don’t expect the heightened demand from nervous buyers to end anytime soon.
Gold bugs having been popping up in the US and abroad. Global demand for gold bars climbed to 257 metric tons in the first quarter of 2025, up 13% in a year, according to the World Gold Council.
Joe Cavatoni, a market strategist at the World Gold Council, said he believes concerns about the US dollar, economic weakness in the US, and the government’s debt and deficit are several reasons gold demand is rising.
This year, Google search interest for “gold bars” has spiked on market-moving events, like the announcement of tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and Moody’s downgrading the US debt.
Genesis Gold Group, a gold dealer that commonly works with clients it describes as “homesteaders” or “preppers,” says it’s seen intense interest in gold in the last few quarters. Demand for gold has been so hot, the company rolled out a prepper bar, a gold bar that can be broken off into pieces, making it easier to trade in the event of a crisis.
Jonathan Rose, the CEO of Genesis, says demand for prepper bars briefly surged after the presidential election and then jumped 20% in the first quarter of 2025, around the time President Donald Trump began to iron out his tariff policy.
More clients who have invested in gold have also been requesting that the gold be sent to them, Rose said, estimating that the number of the firm’s clients who insist on holding physical gold has risen to 70%, up from 20% in past years.
Most of Genesis’s clients are off-the-grid types who desire to be self-sufficient in the event of a collapse, Rose said. But not all of them are as extreme. More everyday people have come to him over the years, with fears about the dollar, inflation, and volatility in risk assets like stocks.
“They have a preparedness plan, you then find out — you kind of peel the layers back — that these people also have dry food, they have water supplies, and it doesn’t mean that they’re tinfoil hat people and they’re living off the grid and they’re listening to shortwave radio. These are just general people looking for a hedge,” he said of their interest in gold.
On the subreddit r/preppers, where membership has soared 354% since 2020, according to historical subreddit data, questions about stocks up on gold regularly flow in from users.
“It helps when a currency collapses. Cash is always king, until it collapses, then that’s where gold and silver step in,” one user wrote.
It’s been a good time to own gold. The price of bullion has climbed 25% in 2025, handily beating the S&P 500, which is down by about 1% year-to-date.
Analysts say that some of the worries driving gold demand could be overstated.
While the risk of a US recession is elevated, Wall Street forecasters don’t expect the economy to enter a serious downturn. Goldman Sachs recently lowered its recession outlook from 45% to 35%, while Barclays recently removed its forecast for a mild recession.
Trump’s tax bill has also stoked more concern about the US debt and budget deficit in the last week. But those worries will likely ease, especially if policymakers amend the bill to appease investors in the bond market, Michael Brown, a senior research strategist at Pepperstone, told BI this week.
“There’s definitely a feel that there may be a little bit excessive influx,” Michael Boutros, a senior technical strategist at StoneX, told BI. “There’s a lot of fearmongering going on in the markets right now.”
Still, Boutrous thinks the demand for gold will remain strong as long as people feel uncertain about the economy. Even when trade agreements get hammered out, he believes investors will still be jittery as they wait to see the impact of tariffs on the economy.
“The rockier things get, the more this is going to find footing,” he said of gold’s price momentum. “It’s just really hard to justify a strong bearish, a bear sentiment on this.”
“We see the price support and the upward trajectory very well positioned for 2025,” the World Gold Council’s Cavatoni added.
