Morning GoldBuzzers!

Ready for another Thursday gold fix?

While Washington descended into shutdown chaos and economic data showed fresh cracks, gold did what it does best - it soared. For gold bulls, every domino is falling exactly as scripted.

Right now, both gold and silver are benefiting from a perfect storm of monetary policy shifts and global chaos that shows no signs of letting up and in today’s Real Talk, I’ll give you my unfiltered take on the government shutdown and what effect it’s likely to have on the markets.

I’ll also show you a 20-year Gold/S&P 500 ratio chart which is really useful in understanding where we are in this gold bull market.

Ok, let's dive in.

Spot gold closed at $3,864 on Wednesday, hitting a fresh record as weak US jobs data practically guaranteed a further Fed rate cut.

The math is simple: softer jobs → lower rates → weaker dollar → stronger gold. And right now, all those dominoes are falling perfectly for precious metals bulls.

Political uncertainty isn't helping the dollar either. With the government shutdown, ongoing debates over Fed independence and murky signals on trade policy, investors are piling into gold and silver as their go-to safe haven.

Incidentally, I’ve had a lot of requests to incorporate some additional data in each newsletter, beyond the main Gold and Silver scoreboard. Several readers have said they’d like to see a summary of different gold and silver ETFs, to compare with the metals themselves, so I’m looking at incorporating that soon.

But what about the main markets - S&P, Nasdaq - possibly Bitcoin too? Drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know if you’d like to see them included too.

The government officially shut down Wednesday at midnight. Betting markets called it perfectly at 84% odds. The Labor Department confirmed it won't release Friday's jobs report. Political chaos has arrived.

Wall Street's response? A collective yawn and modest gains.

I've been watching this disconnect unfold, and I think it reveals something interesting about how markets actually work versus how we think they should work.

The Wednesday midnight deadline came and went with no deal. Government operations have officially ceased.

So how did markets react to the actual shutdown? With the same collective yawn they showed during the buildup.

This is market psychology in action. Political theater creates betting excitement, but actual money flows tell a different story.

An interesting stat is that Bank of America data shows the S&P 500 has gained approximately 1% on average during recent government shutdowns.

Not lost 1%. Gained 1%.

In other words - the market has seen this movie before. Government shutdowns are political spectacle, not economic catastrophe. They're typically short-lived disruptions that create more headlines than lasting damage while the opposition tries to wrangle more concessions.

Some classic fear responses did kick in during the buildup. Gold prices surged nearly 2% to record highs near $3,833. The dollar weakened. Treasury yields fell.

But while people are focused on shutdown drama, the real story here is that gold has been quietly crushing the S&P 500 all year long.

Gold is up roughly 50% year-to-date. The S&P 500? About 12%. That shiny metal your grandparents hoarded is massively outperforming the world's most famous stock index.

I think this ratio chart really helps bring the big picture into clear perspective. It shows the price of Gold divided by the S&P 500 for the past 20 years. The massive rise in the ratio from the early 2000s peaked in 2011, marking the end of the last gold bull market, following which the S&P has had a breathtaking run.

But the chart shows how the ratio has been gradually turning back up since it bottomed in 2022, marking gold’s increasing relative strength.

If anyone tells you that gold’s bull market is over, this chart illustrates how it’s barely getting started. Just to reach the 2011 levels, the ratio would need to triple from where it is today and all the signs are that this bull market is going to be one for the history books.

As I discussed on Tuesday, the concurrent rise in both the S&P and Gold is extremely unusual and represents a worldwide loss of confidence in governments.

This is textbook risk-off behavior meeting a longer trend. When uncertainty rises, money flows to traditional safe havens. Gold becomes the financial equivalent of a panic room even as the U.S. stock market continues to represent a safe haven for overseas money.

What's actually driving the S&P right now? As well as overseas capital flight, it’s corporate earnings momentum. AI technology developments and Federal Reserve policy expectations.

Electronic Arts shares jumped 4.5% on a massive $55 billion takeover deal. That single piece of corporate news generated more trading volume than the shutdown fears.

The market is processing multiple competing factors simultaneously. Political uncertainty creates short-term noise, but fundamental factors drive long-term direction.

I think this disconnect teaches us something valuable about market behavior. Fear sells newspapers and drives betting market activity. But actual investment flows follow different logic.

Professional investors have learned to separate political drama from economic reality. They've seen enough government shutdowns to know they're temporary disruptions, not permanent damage.

The betting markets reflect emotion and speculation. The stock market reflects capital allocation decisions by people with real money at stake.

Ok, the government has shut down. The chaos everyone was betting on has arrived.

Yet markets remain positioned for monthly gains despite the shutdown reality. The S&P 500 is up more than 3% for September. The Nasdaq leads with a 5% rally.

Meanwhile, gold holders are sitting pretty with 50% YTD gains, watching both political chaos and market resilience from the sidelines.

This is how markets actually work. They price in probabilities, not possibilities. They focus on fundamentals, not headlines.

The government shut down Wednesday. Stocks shrug and keep climbing. Gold and Silver are doing what they’ve been doing all year. Winning.

A quick roundup of stories you might have missed:

🏆 Treasure Hunters Strike Gold

A metal detectorist near the Sea of Galilee discovered a 1,400-year-old hoard containing 97 pure gold coins and jewelry with pearls and semi-precious stones dating to the Byzantine era. Live Science

A mysterious collection of 15,000 rare coins hidden from the Nazis for over 50 years has resurfaced with a jaw-dropping value of over $160 million. Daily Galaxy

📈 Bull Market Watch

JP Morgan is a little behind the times and just cranked up their gold forecast to $3,675 by Q4 2025 but they do expect it to cross $4,000 by mid 2026! J.P. Morgan

Silver expert Philip Newman warns the white metal could blast past $50 per ounce next year. PV Magazine USA

🏦 Central Banks Gone Wild

Central banks have been buying over 1,000 tonnes of gold annually since 2020, the highest levels since abandoning the gold standard in the 1970s. Discovery Alert

Nineteen central banks are now cutting out the middleman and buying gold directly from their own domestic mines. CNBC

⛏️ Mining Mania

Chinese miners may have just hit the mother lode with a discovery of 1,100 short tons (998 metric tons) of gold worth approximately $83 billion in Hunan Province. Popular Mechanics

West Red Lake Gold is the only single-asset gold miner starting production in a tier-one jurisdiction in 2025. Carbon Credits

That’s a wrap for today, folks! See you all on Sunday.

Before you go, please take a moment to rate today's newsletter and tell us how we did.

Rick Adams
Founder, GoldBuzz
rick@goldbuzz.com