Gold had its worst quarter in over a decade. Almost nobody is talking about it. Here’s why I am paying attention.
Can I tell you about the first time I bought gold? I did it badly. A headline shouted at me, I bought near the top, and for a glorious fortnight I felt like a genius. Then the price drifted sideways, took my smugness with it, and left me quietly wondering whether I’d bought an investment or a very shiny mood. That was years ago, and the lesson outlasted the loss by a mile: I’d bought gold in reaction, not as a position. I’ve never made quite that mistake again; I’ve found newer, more creative ones instead.
I’m telling you this because gold has just had a genuinely rough few months, and I’ve noticed something odd. Nobody’s talking about it. The same crowd that fires off six messages the instant Bitcoin so much as sneezes has gone completely silent on the metal that lost its shine this summer. And whenever an asset falls while everyone suddenly finds the ceiling fascinating, I lean in, not out.
What actually happened
Here’s the plain version. Gold ran extraordinarily hard through 2025 and into the new year, touching a peak north of five thousand dollars per ounce in January. Then it turned. The three months to June were its worst quarter in about thirteen years, and by mid-July it was hovering around the four-thousand mark, roughly seven per cent lower than the single month. Silver, gold’s excitable younger sibling, the one who never does anything by halves, had it worse, sliding from a January peak above $120 all the way down to the high fifties.
So the story writes itself as a collapse, doesn’t it? Except pull the camera back, and gold is still about a fifth higher than it was a year ago. That’s not a collapse. That’s a hot asset handing back a slice of an outsized win to the most ordinary thing in the world, and yet somehow it always feels like the four horsemen are saddling up when you’re the one living through it.
Why did it fall? Mostly the same lever moving everything this year: interest rates. When central banks turn hawkish, cash pays a real return; a metal that pays you nothing looks less appealing by comparison. Add a firmer dollar and a spell of renewed tension in the Middle East region, pushing oil and inflation fears higher, and you have your correction. None of it is mysterious. All of it is macro.
How I’m reading it
Here’s the part I find far more interesting than the price. Underneath the noise, people buy this stuff by the tonne haven’t blinked. Central banks kept stacking it during the drawdown; China reported its biggest monthly jump in gold reserves in more than two years. Central banks are the least emotional buyers on the planet; they don’t doom-scroll, and they don’t panic-sell at two in the morning. When that lot keeps buying while everyone else heads for the exit, I pay attention.
And silver has a quieter story. It’s walking into what the Silver Institute expects will be a sixth straight year the world uses more of it than it can dig out of the ground. Solar panels, electronics, the entire electrified economy runs on it; it’s less a relic in a vault than a working ingredient. A metal in a genuine supply deficit that just fell 20% is, at the very least, worth understanding before you file it under “boring.”
This is not a call to back up the truck. I never build a view on one headline; I learned that the expensive way, remember. But a falling price, with intact long-term demand, is exactly the kind of thing I like to look at while everyone else looks away. This is the same instinct that made me look twice at crypto’s calmest crash rather than run from it; the fear in the room is often louder than the facts underneath it.
Analysts, for what it’s worth, are split. Some at the big banks still see gold recovering meaningfully by year-end; others think the easy money has been made. That disagreement doesn’t frustrate me; it’s why the market exists.
The quiet takeaway
The metal everyone forgot to panic about is the one I am reading up on this month. Not because I know where the price goes next I don’t, and anyone who tells you they do is selling something- but because ‘a story’ ignored is usually a story worth learning while it’s cheap to learn it. Do your own digging on this one. See what you find when the room is quiet.
The Jacqueline Brand — knowledge builds confidence, and confidence builds wealth. This is editorial commentary for information and education only. It is not financial, investment or professional advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any investment. The Jacqueline Brand is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The value of investments can fall as well as rise, and past performance is not a guide to future returns. Figures were correct at the time of publication. Always do your own research and consider speaking to a regulated adviser. Where cryptoassets are discussed, they are high risk and largely unregulated in the UK, and you could lose all the money you invest. The Collection
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