War! Huh! What is it good for?” shouted Frankie Goes to Hollywood in their 1984 anthem. “Absolutely nothing!” the crowd answered. And while they were thinking of a potential US/Russian conflagration the sentiment hits differently in 2025. There is no doubt we are in the middle of a different kind of war today.  A new era of trade conflict not military conflict is reshaping the global order. In this new world of fragile diplomacy investors have once again turned their gaze to a shiny, ancient fallback – Gold.

Gold isn’t good for much either. Not in a practical sense. It is a decent conductor, but hardly the most efficient. You will find traces of it in spacecraft or dental fillings. But we don’t need it to function as a society. What is it good for? Well, we treat it like a treasure. All the gold ever mined would fit into four Olympic-sized swimming pools. Yet still, central banks hoard it. Vaults are built for it. And economies in crisis pivot toward it. “The superiority of the Gold Standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions” opined Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises in 1912. Given the metal’s recent remarkable price performance he may have been right.

This century gold has risen from around $300 an ounce to more than $3,000 – dwarfing the historical performance of any other metal. That is not a rally. That is a structural revaluation. Why? Partly, it’s the fear trade. Fear of inflation, debt, and the loss of confidence in central bank competence fed in part by online conspiracy theories. Partly, it is a diversification trade. Especially by emerging-market central banks, increasingly wary of overreliance on the dollar. And that was before the last few weeks! Finally, it’s the geopolitical insurance trade. In a world where the rules shift and alliances fray, gold’s historical role as a store of value suddenly feels very 21st century again.

The comparisons with Bitcoin are inevitable. Both are seen as forms of “outside money – immune to the printing presses of central banks”. Appealing to those sceptical of government promises. But where Bitcoin has seen dramatic booms and busts, often driven by questionable players, gold remains grounded. Real. A recent University College London report highlighted the dominance of a handful of actors running “pump and dump” schemes in cryptocurrencies. In any other area of finance, that would likely trigger regulatory crackdowns. Yet authorities have largely stood back, uncertain how or perhaps unwilling to intervene. That regulatory vacuum only strengthens the case for gold. You can’t hack a Krugerrand. You can’t mint more on a whim. There is apparently something reassuring, primal, about holding a tangible object that has carried value for thousands of years.

In the end though gold isn’t good for much. It wastes our resources even mining it. If times are tough, you can’t eat it or power your home with it. But it glows with the weight of history. Its status as a hedge in uncertain time, a relic of value in a volatile world, seems firmly intact. Gold then is less about logic and more about legacy. The human brain is a stubborn thing. We are wired for stories, for symbols. War—what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. But gold? It’s good for the story we tell ourselves when nothing else feels safe.

By Craig Harper, Managing Director.