Gold's record run and India's gold love

Gold spent 2025 doing something it rarely does: behaving like a growth asset. The metal gained roughly 67% over the year — its biggest annual jump since 1979 — setting more than 50 all-time highs and pushing past $4,600 an ounce into early 2026. In a world of geopolitical shocks and policy uncertainty, investors piled into the oldest safe haven there is.

What drove the rally

Fear, mostly. Wars, tariff whiplash, wobbling faith in currencies and central banks buying aggressively all drove money toward an asset with no counterparty risk. But this rally had a new engine: ordinary retail investors buying bars, coins and gold ETFs, not just jewellery — a shift from adornment to allocation.

The receipts — the India angle

Nowhere is gold more cultural than India, where it's woven into weddings, festivals and household security. Domestic prices rose about 60% year on year, and December 2025 saw record inflows into Indian gold ETFs — net inflows of ₹430 billion (about $4.9 billion) and 37 tonnes of net demand, the highest on record. Crucially, the buying tilted toward investment — bars and coins nearly doubling — rather than the traditional jewellery purchase.

How to hold it

Gold has proven, once again, that it does its job when everything else feels shaky — so a modest slice of your savings in it is sensible, and in India it's practically a birthright. The danger is chasing a 67% year after it happened: buying gold at record highs because it just soared is how retail investors always get hurt. Own it as insurance, not as a bet.

Money stories on crazein are information and commentary, not investment advice.