The price of gold has been going up for some time now, and some economists have been predicting even higher values of the precious metal, but the question for many people is: Why?
There's not one single reason, according to one gold market expert, but a combination of circumstances that feed into concerns about the future, which leads to increased gold investment by people on Wall Street and on Main Street.
"You have geopolitics and maybe a subset of that is the trade war. I guess it probably warrants its own subcategory of The Trade Wars," according to a Senior Fellow at Independent Institute and Freemarket Institute Professor Benjamin Powell.
But it's the inflation during the Biden years and Ukraine war uncertainties and Middle East tensions and rising concerns about national security in the face of China's economic rise that's been feeding the move of money from some investments into the gold markets, and it's stayed there.
When the going gets rough in the markets, the money flies to ports of safety. Gold has always been a port of safety and that's why its attracting money now.
Geopolitics is the center, though, and Professor Powell says it's fears of war and fears of inflation: "all three of these things are going to feed into the flight to quality, the flight to safety that gold represents."
It's said that in a time of relatively high inflation such as we've seen the past few years, gold holds its value better than anything and is a tried and true store of wealth, which also makes it a safe haven during tumultuous times, adding to its unpredictability.
Gold isn't predictable, he adds, but what is?
Markets dislike uncertainties, so the more certainty we have and more clearly our national priorities and policies are defined, the better.
"Then if we know future policies, then we can predict what will happen to prices," says Professor Powell.