Megan McCarty Carino

And $5,000 and change per troy ounce is almost twice what gold was just a year ago.

And that's been happening.

And here's the twist.

As it's been happening, gold has started to displace dollar-denominated assets in the holdings of central banks around the world.

Reuters reports gold now slightly outvalues treasury bonds in those holdings.

And data from the IMF shows U.S.

dollar assets now account for less than half of those holdings in absolute terms, even as gold has risen sharply to make up around 28 percent of those holdings.

That is exactly what you might expect to see happen if the U.S.

dollar were losing its appeal as a safe haven go-to.

Marketplace and Mitchell Hartman gets us going.

Gold has been edging ever higher partly because investor stress has, says Samir Samana at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

tariffs and trade wars, geopolitical tensions in oil-producing regions, rising government debt across everywhere.

Foreign central banks have been buying up gold, too.

That's partly a defensive move.

A hostile government can slap on sanctions, but it can't seize gold out of another country's vaults.

The trend took off after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

This rise of gold in central bank holdings doesn't necessarily imply they're selling off U.S.

dollars and treasuries, says Jennifer Lee at Bank of Montreal.

There's another factor at play here, says Jay Hatfield at Infrastructure Capital Advisors.

Hatfield says the problem with momentum rallies is it's really hard to predict when they'll peter out.