By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Gold has been a clear, glittering winner in 2025. Why, James? What are the reasons that explain this move?
00:11 James
Well, I think, you know, you know, from the time that I started covering these metals decades ago, uh the same 12 or 15 factors drive them every year. The trick to looking at the market, I think, is to figure out which of those factors is in the driver’s seat. And for the past couple of years, and especially this year, it’s been geopolitics. And and you get a lot of associated, you get a lot of risk and you get a lot of uncertainty associated with elevated geopolitical risk levels. And you’re not really sure, it it distorts capital markets, it it does a lot of things. And and gold being a hard asset and a safe haven will tend to be a winner out of that. And I I I would say I wouldn’t say it’s the only reason by any means, but it’s certainly a dominant one right now, geopolitical risk.
00:58 Speaker A
Something I’m really curious about is if the tariff risk starts to come off the boil, right? If we start to see deals being announced, is there still a scenario in which gold can continue to rise or at least maintain these levels?
01:14 James
Well, there could be, but that would remove one of the legs of the rally uh without a doubt. I mean, one of the things that presses gold higher is economic policy uncertainty. It’s not necessarily whether the policy is good or bad, which you could argue from from whatever standpoint you are. It’s the uncertainty that gold doesn’t like. And if you take, for example, Mrs. Thatcher in the UK or Ronald Reagan in in in the US, there was clarity about what they wanted to do, whether you agreed with it or not. Right now, all the indications are, if you look at the geopolitical risk, or if you look at rather the economic policy uncertainty risk index, it’s very high. And and that’s what’s helping to feed gold. I think if we got some clarity on the tariff issue, um that would help undermine it.