The Gold Market
The world's oldest money and its newest reserve boom: why gold became money, the price from $35 to the record of January 2026 and what moves it, who holds the 222,600 tonnes above ground, the central banks' buying since Russia's reserves were frozen in 2022, the mines and their economics, the balance of supply and demand, the refiners, vaults, and flows of London, New York, and Shanghai, the smuggled trade, gold as an investment, the politics of gold from sanctions to Fort Knox, and the metals that trade beside it. Written as of October 2026, with gold about a quarter below its January record after the Federal Reserve's first rise since 2023 and before its October 27-28 meeting. Where the field argues, from whether gold has broken free of real interest rates and whether it hedges inflation to whether America should revalue its gold, each side makes its case before the evidence. Opens with a market snapshot from one day's close, and its worked examples run on October's numbers, from the cost of holding gold against inflation-protected bonds to a mine's margin, a portfolio in 2022, a revaluation of America's gold, and a trade in the gold-silver ratio.