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Gold has always been one of the most valuable and coveted metals in the world. Scarcity is the main reason for its value. Estimates of global mined gold reserves fluctuate slightly from year to year, but are not higher than 50,000 tons. The countries with the largest estimated reserves are Australia, Russia and the United States. Currently, China is the world's leading gold mining country, followed by Australia and Russia.

After hitting a record high earlier in the day due to demand for safe-haven assets amid ongoing uncertainties in US trade policy, gold dipped below $3,330 per ounce on Thursday as speculators grabbed profits. Following signals of a potential delay to current auto tariffs and the suspension of levies on certain tech products from reciprocal duties, the Trump administration has begun trade probes to pursue potential tariffs on pharmaceutical and semiconductor imports, causing market attention to shift constantly. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, meantime, stated on Wednesday that the US central bank will hold off on raising interest rates until more information is available since he anticipates that Trump's tariffs will result in slower growth and higher inflation. Elsewhere, investors are closely watching prospects for US-China trade negotiations, after China expressed its willingness to resume trade talks, but under certain conditions.

On April 2, U.S. President Donald Trump declared his intention to impose a 10% universal tariff on all imports, with significantly higher tariffs expected for a number of countries. Before that announcement, most commodities, including gold and silver, were trading higher as traders expected the tariffs to lead to inflation. The demand for silver and other industrial inputs would decline if gold continued to shine as a safe haven with no industrial value, as it did during the first wave of the COVID crisis. Although gold has experienced volatile trading, prices have risen to unprecedented levels as "store-of-value investors" control the demand for the precious metal. When investors are concerned about market, fiscal, economic, and geopolitical issues, demand for store-of-value tends to rise. There's currently a spike in all those factors, which is propelling gold to all-time highs.