Buffett's unpopular view on the gold boom

Gold has been connected an bonzer run. Spot prices touched an all-time precocious of $5,589 an ounce on Jan. 28, 2026, earlier retreating, and are present moving again, putting the metallic connected gait for its eighth consecutive monthly gain. Central banks, ETF investors and retail buyers are each piling in.

Yet Warren Buffett, arguably the world's astir celebrated investor, continues to beryllium it retired entirely.

Berkshire Hathaway carries zero nonstop vulnerability to golden adjacent arsenic prices hover adjacent $5,100 per ounce. Buffett handed the main enforcement relation to Greg Abel successful precocious 2025, but his investing doctrine inactive governs the firm. And that doctrine has ne'er had country for gold.

So wherefore does the antheral who built 1 of history's top fortunes support passing connected the commercialized everyone other seems to beryllium making?

Buffett's lawsuit against golden is long, accordant and well-documented. In his 2011 shareholder letter, helium placed golden successful the class of assets that "will ne'er nutrient anything."

The buyer's lone hope, helium argued, is that idiosyncratic other volition wage much for it later. He wrote that owners "are not inspired by what the plus itself tin produce" since "it volition stay lifeless forever," but alternatively by the content that others volition privation it adjacent much successful the future.

At the 2018 Berkshire yearly meeting, helium made the mathematics plain. A $10,000 concern successful an S&P 500index money successful March 1942 would person grown to $51 cardinal by 2018. The aforesaid $10,000 successful golden returned astir $400,000. His conclusion: for each dollar made successful American business, golden buyers captured little than a penny.

He besides called retired gold's affectional entreaty directly.

"What motivates astir golden purchasers is their content that the ranks of the fearful volition grow," helium wrote successful that aforesaid 2011 letter.

Fear is not a instauration for a semipermanent concern thesis, successful his view. Farms provender people. Apartments location them. Companies vessel goods and people earnings. Gold conscionable waits for the adjacent buyer.

In the 2nd 4th of 2020, Berkshire amazed Wall Street by softly buying a $562 cardinal involvement successful Barrick Gold, 1 of the world's largest golden miners. Barrick's shares surged much than 10% connected the news.

More Gold:

• Gold, metallic surge aft grounds driblet flashes method signal

• Silver and golden tumble triggers large reset for mining stocks

• J.P. Morgan revises golden terms people for 2026

But the presumption was small, little than 0.3% of Berkshire's portfolio astatine the time. Most analysts attributed the determination to portfolio managers Todd Combs oregon Ted Weschler alternatively than Buffett himself. Berkshire exited Barrick wholly by the extremity of 2020, wrong 2 quarters of buying in, per SEC filings.