Gold Was Up 95.6% on the Year in January. Today It's Up 13.9%.

On January 29, gold was up 95.6% over the prior twelve months. Today it’s up 13.9%. Yahoo Finance says that’s the smallest year-over-year gain in more than a year. Trading Economics has it at 13.88%, so this isn’t one data vendor having a bad morning.

Three weeks ago, this site told you to ignore the daily noise and look at the annual number instead: gold up 31.1%, silver up 71.9%. I stand by the advice. But I owe you the follow-up. That annual number has been cut by more than half since then.

What Did It

Bonds. Mostly bonds.

Reuters’ Morning Bid says the 5-year Treasury yield topped 5% for the first time since 2007. The 10-year hit 5.09%. The 30-year hit 5.391%. A $70 billion 5-year auction drew weak demand. When the government has to pay more to borrow and still can’t find enthusiastic buyers, every asset that pays nothing gets marked down. Gold pays nothing.

The Fed is doing its part. CME FedWatch shows a 69% chance of another hike in October, per Reuters. Trading Economics says those odds were 55% a day earlier. What moved them was a boom that won’t quit: US business activity growing at its fastest pace in more than five years, and weekly jobless claims near 60-year lows.

Spot gold fell 0.6% to $4,261.79, its lowest since September 17. It’s down 8.3% over the past month. Silver dropped to about $63.47, down 1.5% on the day. Its annual gain is now 40.4%, down from that 71.9% three weeks ago.

The Safe Haven Isn’t Getting the Safe-Haven Trade

Here’s the part that would have sounded insane in January. There’s still a war with Iran. Oil climbed into triple digits again this week after disappointing US-Iran talks. Capital Economics’ Hamad Hussain told Reuters that oil and Treasury yields “are likely to remain elevated,” which limits gold’s upside and could push it lower.

And the one event that could have scared people into gold took the fear off the table instead. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US and China agreed to extend their trade truce to January 10. It had been set to expire in November. Xi Jinping is in Washington. Nobody is doing a tariff panic trade today.

So gold is competing against a bond paying over 5%, and the crises that should help it aren’t. That’s the worst matchup it can draw. It’s still up double digits on the year.

What This Means for Stackers

A year-over-year number depends on two prices: today’s and the one from twelve months ago. It will keep moving even if gold goes nowhere, so it’s a bad way to tell whether your stack is “working.” It was a bad way to feel rich in January, too.

What I’d actually take from today: the cushion that made the dips feel painless is thinner. If you bought anything in the last month, it’s probably underwater. That’s what buying on a schedule looks like in real time. It’s uncomfortable, and it’s supposed to be.

What to watch: October’s hike odds and the 5-year yield. Gold’s direction right now depends on the bond market more than on Iran or China. Whenever yields stop climbing, gold loses its main opponent. Nobody knows when that happens. I don’t either.