Why Everyone Is Suddenly Buying Gold

For all the side-eyes that China and America throw at each other, apparently we have one thing in common: the fear of tomorrow.

You’ve no doubt heard about Costco regularly selling out of one-ounce gold bars. Fresh shipments arrive and—poof!—gone in a blink. Wells Fargo estimates that Costco is generating between $100 million and $200 million a month in gold bar revenue as  American consumers snap up physical gold alongside rotisserie chickens and bulk toilet paper.

Which is where we return to China…

Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper published a story a few weeks back on a trend among China’s Gen Z who are gobbling up “gold beans”—tiny, one-gram gold ingots taking the shape of cashews, gourds, an abalone shell, even a Lilliputian piece of Swiss cheese, like this…

Per the Straits Times:
With China’s deflation at its worst in 15 years, a volatile stock market and bank interest rates too low for her liking, 18-year-old Tina Hong is placing her financial security in gold beans.

Weighing as little as one gram each, the beans – and other forms of gold jewellery – are increasingly viewed as the safest investment bet for young Chinese in an era of economic uncertainty. It is part of a larger consumer trend for all things gold – from bullion to beans and bracelets – that has gripped the mainland.

“It’s basically impossible to lose money from buying gold,” reasoned Ms Hong, a college freshman studying computer science in Fujian province.
I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to lose money buying gold: people who FOMO’d into gold in 1980 were not so keen on the metal by 1982, when it was down about 60%.

Still, young Tina’s sentiment is spot-on: People don’t buy physical gold when they feel safe. They buy it when they don’t.

And beaucoup reasons exist to explain why people all over our little space rock are feeling unsafe these days.

Now, I’m not gonna run through the litany of reasons to feel unsafe. We all know what they are, starting with US and global debts that are going to blow up the world, and concluding with the end of the neoliberal world order of the last 80-ish years that is ushering in self-serving mercantilism that will lead to retaliatory trade wars, supply-chain fragmentation/inflation, and currency manipulation that triggers a race to the bottom.

We’re now in an era where owning gold truly is about financial survival.

Some people will understand that.

Many people won’t.

Those that don’t… they’ll muddle through the US/global financial reset as best they can, just like our forebears muddled through the Great Depression as best they could. Some made it.

Many didn’t.

See, what connects Tina Hong’s glass jar of beans in China’s Fujian province with a Costco shopper in New Jersey loading a gold bar into her cart is not demographics or geography. It’s a shared, intuitive understanding of what’s coming—even if neither of them can adequately articulate what that sense of doom is.

They just know that somethin’ ain’t right.

They know that government’s singular focus will always be on preserving government at the cost of the people… which is why FDR stole Americans’ gold in 1933, despite the immorality of doing so. Instead of fixing his government, he opted to screw the people.

That’s government’s go-to-play across history.

I’ve mentioned this several times in recent years, but there’s a reason the world’s central banks are purging dollars to buy record amounts of gold instead. There’s a reason they did that in the 1960s too, just before Nixon killed the gold standard, which sent the dollar down.

There’s a reason as well that the Chinese central bank has been buying gold hand over fist, and why the country has secretly been adding more gold than it officially reports.

An ill-wind is blowing, and it’s forewarning of a life-altering storm on the horizon.

Again, if you understand that, you’re golden… and you probably already own some gold as a bulwark.

If not… well, just know that every period of extreme sovereign debt accumulation has eventually resolved itself through inflation, default, or restructuring. And every time the system has lurched toward one of those outcomes, the people who held hard assets fared better… and those who held paper promises—that includes the US dollar—have been financially devastated, their lifestyles erased in a flash.

We’ve reached that moment of economic decline in which there’s growing global recognition that we’re now living through the late stages of a financial system in active decay, a system built on assumptions that are no longer holding firm.

We’re past the “cracks are showing” phase.

We’re now at the point where the iceberg begins to calve as large pieces fall away.

The time to position yourself for what’s to come is before the ice hits the water. Because afterwards, the tidal wave it creates is going to wash away the financial life you take for granted before you even know to react.

Tina Hong figured this out in Fujian province at 18. So, she’s buying gold beans to protect her future.

What are you buying?

P.S. If you want to know how you can profit from gold, I’m hosting my new live Gold Multiplier Masterclass on June 20. I’ll show you exactly how I’m positioning for what I believe will be the next major phase of this gold bull market.