13 NOVEMBER 2025
A general rule of thumb is that a bull market (in any asset) is typically getting long in the tooth whenever retail investors start to buy en masse.
So the chart below is a warning sign for gold bugs.
The number of outstanding shares in the main Gold ETFs are a good proxy for retail investor demand; the figure rises when there is growing interest (and vice versa).
The blue line relates to one of the large US-listed Gold ETFs, which has clearly become more popular since early 2024, but in a relatively orderly way. In short, US retail investors are buying more gold, but not to the same extent that we saw just a few years ago.
Conversely, the red line shows a recent surge in buying of Gold ETFs in China. The parabolic nature of this uptrend suggests Chinese retail investors may soon reach a state of exhaustion, which argues for a slowdown, or even a weakening, in gold demand from this dominant buyer.
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