The longstanding allegiances between global powers have been tested over the past few years. Wars between Russia and Ukraine, and between the U.S., Israel, and Iran in the Middle East, have pushed governments around the world to signal where their loyalties lie—even when the conflicts are domestically unpopular and far removed from their own borders.
And that’s before you get to President Trump’s tariff agenda and the trade battles that have ensued because of it.
So it is perhaps no wonder that, under the radar, central banks across the world are stocking up on the safe-haven asset of gold, and they don’t want to share where they’re keeping it.
Goldman Sachs wrote in a note earlier this week that it estimates central banks globally purchased 79 tonnes of gold in August, more than four times the amount of the pre-2022 average (the year the Russia-Ukraine war began) of 17 tonnes. On a three-month seasonally adjusted basis, purchases are running at 85 tonnes per month, Goldman noted.
