By early December 2025, the US dollar gold price had risen by around 60 percent within the year. No other asset class has come close to this performance – not even the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which, according to data recently published by market data provider Slickcharts, dropped 3.39 percent over the course of the year. The precious metal’s success is, however, not primarily due to the weak performance of other asset classes. Quite the contrary: most assets saw significant appreciation.
Gold price increase double that of second-ranked asset class
According to the World Gold Council’s recently published Gold Outlook 2026, emerging markets stocks came in second behind gold, with an average price increase of 30.9 percent, closely followed by stocks from industrialized nations excluding the US, at 29.21 percent. While US stocks performed weaker in 2025, they did see an increase in value of 17.74 percent.
Commodities see overall strong performance in 2025
Although the 2025 crude oil price was significantly down until early December, commodities saw an overall positive development with an increase of 16.51 percent, accredited primarily to precious metals. In addition to gold, silver also performed extremely well.
As expected, government bonds lag comparatively far behind in terms of performance in 2025, with US bonds doing slightly better than government bonds globally (ex US) at 7.46 percent compared to 6.69 percent. The US currency ranks last in terms of performance, with the weakness of the US dollar throughout 2025 a main reason for the sharp rise in demand for gold in the second half of 2025, alongside increased geopolitical risks.