Mitchell Hartman

I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.

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.

I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.

It's hard to keep a classroom full of college students engaged these days.

So Professor Enid Baxter-Rice takes hers outside.

We had class in that tree down there in November.

For 20 years, she's taught cinema and technology at California State University Monterey Bay.

And for a while now, she's noticed some troubling changes in her students as smartphones, social media, and short-form video have become ubiquitous.

I saw a

Huge amount of distraction.

I saw that they weren't socializing as much, and I saw that they had more anxiety.