Ah, if I only knew! My feelings are bad, but I am not acting accordingly. I am still quite invested, only not directly in any US stock.
Shares, next year, worldwide average? Either up by 15% or down by 35-50%, probability respectively 75% - 25%.
My feelings are unreliable, in case this was not evident.
From the BBC:
The world’s largest economy expanded at an annual rate of 4.3%, up from 3.8% in the previous quarter. That was better than expected, and marked the strongest growth in two years.
It was lifted by consumer spending that rose at an annual rate of 3.5%, compared with 2.5% in the previous quarter, despite a slowing job market, as households spent more on health care services.
Michael Pearce, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, said the economy was well positioned as it headed into 2026, when it will start to feel the boost from tax cuts and the US central bank’s recent moves to drop interest rates.
“Underlying measures are consistent with a solid expansion,” he said.
In a post on social media, Trump celebrated the figures, saying his tariffs were responsible. He has been on the defensive amid souring consumer confidence and polls indicating dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy.
However, some analysts warned that rising prices faced by some households could make it difficult to sustain the unusually strong pace of growth seen in the most recent quarter.
That’s an interesting thought. But as far as I know, the total value of all gold in the world in dollar equivalent is now much smaller than the overall reserve currency market, by quite a large amount.
This has diverged a lot since major currencies abandoned the ‘gold standard’, I think?
It would probably take a seismic conceptual shift to revert?
A quick internet search finds:
More than 216,000 tonnes of gold have been mined from Earth, of which nearly 148,000 tonnes have been mined since 1950. Other independent calculations vary by as much as 20 percent. […]
As of 2025, the price of one gram of gold was approximately $118. So, one metric ton of gold costs $118 million. If you do the calculation, the total value of all gold ever mined (216,000,000,000 grams) will exceed $25.48 trillion.
The national debt of the USA is as of November 2025 is $38 trillion (wikipedia). And that is just the USA, every other country seems to have debts too.
I would deduce that you need to mine much more gold or gold has to become much more expensive if you want to switch to a gold based system for international debts.
But could it be that this is exactly what’s happening? AIUI, one of the problems with the gold standard is that as economies (and debts) grow, gold must inflate with them, and that rewards hoarding (which limits money supply and thus growth).
That is what people who like investing in gold will tell you. It is probably one of the reasons gold is getting more expensive, but I doubt it is the main reason. It is an argument, but it does not convince me. See also who has how much gold (remember: the total gold amount is estimated at a bit more than 200,000 tons):
The United States government maintains the largest official gold reserves of any single entity, holding 8,133 metric tons—significantly more than double Germany’s position as the second-largest holder. However, when considering all forms of gold ownership, Indian households collectively possess approximately 25,000 tons, exceeding the combined reserves of the US, Germany, and the IMF.
That is no place to start if you want to make gold the world debt standard. Not if you consider who owns how much to whom.
But if you did, indeed, gold would have to appreciate manyfold. Thus the gold bugs will argue in this sense. I don’t buy it. YMMV
For the record, I’m pretty much anti-gold, both as an investment and as a currency backer.
I would guess the runup is due to a general feeling of unease about government debts in general and a change in world order.
Yes, there is much talk of debasement and debasement trade recently. I understand the unease. I don’t think that gold is the solution. Gold is a fetish to me. It is not productive, it yields no dividends. But the last years it has not been a bad investment.
I doubt anyone serious is seriously thinking that good is going to become the currency reserve, taking on the dollar’s role. But I do think that trust in the dollar as the stable reliable currency reserve is greatly diminished, and that many countries are in process of having a diverse basket of hedges regarding that. Gold is IME an unavoidable pillar in that basket, even as it is clearly not up for the job on its own.
Realistically there is no other single currency up to, crypto isn’t, and depending on the dollar without any hedge is clearly no longer tenable, at least for the next several years.
Full disclosure - I’ve long been a believer in having a 5 to 10% gold allocation mainly for its lack of lockstep with equities.
Sorry for that odd double post. Weird stuff when I try to correct a missed word late.
Extra one removed
Ethical investment?
Sorry… 
Hey my Green Energy fund is doing well!
(Typo, forgotten word, not my clearest post ever!)
Short version - there will not be complete dedollarization. And gold will not be the only hedge used in foreign exchanges, but there is going to more hedging in ways that include gold.
And clean energy stocks doing so well (my green energy index fund up about 30% for the year), in the face of Trump’s antipathy to anything green or clean, is my nomination for an important underreported investment story.
At the end of the day, there is a lot of planet left outside the US… and many companies have focused on that part…
Resources and biotechnology have both featured in my small ‘speculative’ growth stock allocation.
I do think AI in biotech (and healthcare more generally) is likely to help larger companies’ pace of research. So I’m currently investigating who’s got some promising strong pipelines (and cash runways) over the next 3-5 years.
I’ve heard it said that healthcare is almost a ‘defensive growth’ stock, which makes it attractive, although I suspect also easily over-valued and over-hyped. Anyone had experience (good or bad) in this sector?
I don’t see the big Pharma stocks as over Valued or hyped right now. They are up some but still pretty beat down and with good dividends. Small biotechs are bigger rolls of the dice.
Big Pharma has essentially outsourced a large portion of its early R&D to the startups. They will fund startups and then just buy the promising ones once they’re deep enough into a promising trial. In my time there I’ve watched as departments with names like “Discovery Research” shrink and disappear altogether. I’m not saying they don’t do any, just a lot less.
That’s very interesting and makes sense from a risk management perspective.
I suppose any startup wholly reliant on one large funding source is going to be an ‘all or nothing’ proposition.
I gather that the downside to it is that (in the worst case) the larger company largely becomes an investments/holding company run by financiers. Said financiers have no idea how to evaluate promising research and don’t have any people who understand the R&D process. Consequently, they make poor decisions on which companies to buy and which to invest in.
A company who is also, internally, active in R&D has more in-house talent to review outside companies for value.