Gold is an American staple of value, from its luxurious roots, to the Gold Rush, to its position as an investment today. There has never been a period in America where gold wasn’t valued. What determines gold’s value and causes short term booms and busts are of much interest then. While gold has always gone up in value in the long term, looking year after year interesting trends reveal themselves.

Investments in America tend to follow one principle with certainty, investments fail to be secure the moment they are defaulted on. While this is rare for the most part, there’s always the danger of banks failing, with a history of bailouts riddling American banks. Gold makes itself the exception by being unable to be defaulted on.

This is because gold is not just a financial investment, it is a physical entity. This is the reason behind its security and particularly odd trends of booming and busting. While most investments will start to drop heavily as inflation rises, wages drop, and the economy generally falters, gold doesn’t. Gold sees its biggest increases in value during these times.
Gold is tangible and importantly finite. This means as the dollar loses value in the U.S in times of inflation, the real value of gold remains the same, so it will follow the trend of inflation by growing in value. While this isn’t a perfect trend, it makes gold one of the most reliable investments, specifically in times of economic uncertainty. There’s no investment quite like gold.