Author: BlackMask Financial

US President Donald Trump said he’s prepared to move ahead with “major” sanctions on Russian oil if NATO countries do the same. Trump, a day after he said he was losing patience with President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, said he’s “ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA,” in a post on his Truth Social site early Saturday. Many European nations have cut back or stopped purchasing Russian oil, but several NATO allies — including Hungary — have blocked more stringent proposals by the European Union to target Russia’s energy sector. Bloomberg reported on Friday that the US planned to urge allies in the Group of Seven to impose tariffs as high as 100% on China and India for their purchases of Russian oil, as part of an effort to convince Putin to end Russia’s invasion of its neighbor. “This, plus NATO, as a group, placing 50% to 100% TARIFFS ON CHINA, to be fully withdrawn after the WAR with Russia and Ukraine is ended, will also be of great help in ENDING this deadly, but RIDICULOUS, WAR,” Trump wrote. Trump has at times adopted a softer tone toward China as he continues to push for a summit with President Xi Jinping and a trade deal with the world’s second-largest economy. And any move to impose sanctions on China would likely draw a strong retaliatory response from Beijing and disrupt the tentative trade war truce between the US and China. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are set to meet with Chinese officials in Madrid in the coming days. G-7 finance ministers discussed how to increase pressure on Russia during a meeting on Friday.

Up to now, Trump has resisted adding new sanctions on Russia as he pursued peace talks with Putin. But, after holding a summit with Putin in Alaska that failed to yield any pause in Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, Trump was unable to arrange a three-way meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. In recent days, there have been increasing signs that Trump’s patience with Putin is wearing thin, particularly with Russia conducting several days of dramatic airstrikes in Kyiv in the wake of the Alaska meeting. “As you know, NATO’S commitment to WIN has been far less than 100%, and the purchase of Russian Oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia,” he added. Hungarian President Viktor Orban, a Trump ally who has also maintained close ties with Putin, has shown little willingness to shift his opposition to sanctions on Russian oil. The country has a contract with Russia’s Gazprom PJSC for 4.5 billion cubic meters a year that runs until 2036, which has been supplemented with additional purchases since 2022.

NN: The markets are in denial. Russian oil is abut to be yanked out of the market

Gold has eclipsed its inflation-adjusted peak set more than 45 years ago, as growing anxiety about the US’s economic trajectory takes bullion’s blistering three-year bull run deeper into uncharted territory.

The spot price of gold has surged about 5% so far this month, with prices hitting an all-time high of $3,674.27 an ounce on Tuesday. It’s set more than 30 nominal records already in 2025, but the latest leg of the rally has also taken it through an inflation-adjusted peak set on Jan. 21, 1980, when prices topped out at $850.

Factoring in decades of consumer price increases, that equates to about $3,590 — although there are multiple methods of adjusting for inflation, and some would put the 1980 peak at lower levels. It’s a moving target, but analysts and investors are in agreement that gold has now shot firmly through it, providing a further fillip for gold’s credentials as an age-old hedge against rising prices and weakening currencies.

“Gold is a very unique asset in its historical ability over hundreds — if not thousands — of years to play that role,” said Robert Mullin, portfolio manager at Marathon Resource Advisors. “Asset allocators are entering a period where they are justifiably concerned about the levels of both deficit spending, as well as questioning central banks’ priorities and willingness to truly fight inflation.”

The precious metal has risen nearly 40% this year as President Donald Trump has cut taxes, expanded his global trade war, and sought unprecedented influence over the Federal Reserve. A selloff in the dollar and long-term US government bonds is highlighting eroding appetite for American assets, and fueling questions about whether the nation’s debt remains a haven in times of turmoil.

Read More: How Gold’s Safe-Haven Appeal Is Fueling Record Prices

When gold hit $850 in January 1980, the US was grappling with a collapsing currency, a spike in inflation and an unfolding recession. The price had doubled over the previous two months, after US President Jimmy Carter issued a freeze on Iranian assets in response to a hostage crisis in Tehran, raising the perceived risk of holding dollar assets for some foreign central banks.

“Gold is only reflecting the renewed awareness that inflation can be and still is a problem, but also uncertainty about the world,” said Carmen Reinhart, a former senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank Group. Gold’s “role as an inflation hedge was a stamp of its popularity in the 70s and 80s, but you need to look before the 1980s: Gold has always played an important role when there’s uncertainty.”

Compared with the parabolic surge to the peak in 1980 — and a precipitous collapse that followed — today’s rally has unfolded with far less volatility. That’s partly because today’s market is far more liquid and accessible to investors, and also because it’s attracting a broader base of investors who are offsetting weakness in traditional areas of demand.

Thanks to the surge in prices, the value of bullion held in London vaults exceeded $1 trillion for the first time last month, and it’s also overtaken the euro as the second-largest asset in global central bank reserves.

Grant Sporre, global head of metals and mining at Bloomberg Intelligence, has overhauled his analytical models to take fuller account of the broad and diverse drivers behind gold’s stellar rally. They suggest gold is over-priced relative to historical norms except in one crucial aspect: Compared to US stocks, gold still looks cheap, and he says prices could vault higher still if equity markets start to creak.

“Gold’s eye-wateringly expensive, but the market is happy to pay the price in order to secure that insurance,” Sporre said.

Gold’s Comeback

It’s a striking comeback for an asset that was derided by central bankers throughout the 1990s and 2000s, as the end of the Cold War, the birth of the eurozone, and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization ushered in a new era of globalization underpinned by the dollar. As stock markets took off, many private investors turned their back on gold too.

This time, many central banks are again buying gold to diversify their foreign exchange holdings from the dollar, and insulate themselves from sanctions targeting America’s adversaries. Prices have almost doubled since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a resulting freeze on the Kremlin’s overseas assets, with the rally broadening out as institutional investors started loading up in the wake of Trump’s inauguration.

Sporadic buying sprees in China and a resurgence in the popularity of exchange-traded funds — which have made gold more accessible to retail investors — have also lent support along the way.

“The movement from a unipolar world to a multipolar world I think has accelerated the view of gold as being an asset that central banks want to own,” said Greg Sharenow, a portfolio manager at Pacific Investment Management Co. “High net worth individuals have been viewing it similarly, and gold has been a big beneficiary of the broadening and the diversification of assets.”

Over the past two weeks, prices have erupted higher again, shooting clear of all-time nominal highs set in April after a spell of range-bound trading. The latest breakout has come as investors across financial markets bet that the Fed will soon start lowering interest rates off to head off a slowdown in hiring and and a potential economic downturn.

Historically, rate cuts have boosted gold’s appeal relative to yield-bearing assets like Treasuries, while also putting pressure on the dollar. And with Trump staging an unprecedented assault on the Fed’s independence, gold bulls are also increasingly alert to the possibility that the central bank could be compelled to cut rates aggressively even in the face of rising inflation risks.

Trump’s Attack on the Fed Fires Up Gold Bulls Betting on Crisis

When similar dynamics took hold in the early 1970s — with the dollar slumping as then-President Richard Nixon pressured the Fed to keep rates low in the face of inflation risks — it helped kick-start a colossal rally in gold, with the twin oil shocks of that decade helping to ultimately lift it to its $850 peak.

“I could read what was happening in the world: Every country was building up huge debt, every country was printing money and debasing their currency,” said Jim Rogers, the co-founder of the Quantum Fund alongside George Soros, who began buying bullion in the early 1970s. “And I also read enough to know that gold and silver were a way to protect yourself in times like that.”

NN: This will be one of the all time great shorts