Gold price jumps above $5,000 an ounce for first time amid Trump turmoil
The price of gold has jumped above $5,000 an ounce for the first time as Donald Trump’s chaotic policies and proclamations drive more investors to seek safe harbour in the precious metal.Gold reached a record high of $5,100 (£3,723) on Monday morning, before easing back to settle up 2.2% at $5,091.The moment came after Trump threatened Canada with 100% tariffs if Ottawa made “a deal with China”, and after the US president’s showdown with Europe over the future of Greenland.With global financial markets already jittery, there are also rising fears of another US shutdown after Democrats threatened funding for the Department of Homeland Security after federal immigration agents killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Monday’s milestone is the latest in an extraordinary and historic run for gold, the price of which has jump by almost 90% since Trump’s second inauguration a little over a year ago.Ross Norman, an independent analyst, said gold had become a safe haven from stocks and bonds that were strongly influenced by the US president’s erratic policy shifts.“There has been a vaporising of trust,” Norman said.“And it takes a while to win back that trust, which is why in the meantime we are seeing a movement away from the dollar and dollar assets.”He said gold had much further to rise this year and predict a high of $6,400 an ounce, with an average of $5,375 over 2026.
“The only certainty at the moment seems to be uncertainty, and that’s playing very much into gold’s hands,” Norman added.Steve Miller, an investment strategy adviser at GSFM, an Australia-based asset manager, said the rise in gold prices was the most spectacular in his four decades of working in financial markets.“The second oil shock and the inflation scare in the late ’70s, early ’80s would be the last time I remember when gold did this – and that was before my time in markets,” he said.Anxiety on international money markets has also been fuelled by a new administration in Tokyo, which has pledged to cut taxes to make spiralling food costs more affordable.Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister since last October, has indicated she wants to embark on an unfunded spending spree if her conservative Liberal Democratic party is re-elected in a snap election to be held on 8 February.
Last week, Takaichi, who is the country’s first female prime minister, raised the prospect of tax cuts to win over voters, initially by suspending Japan’s 8% consumption tax on food.However, this spooked international investors, who fear the campaign promise will have the same effect as Liz Truss’s 2022 mini-budget in the UK.Japan has $9tn of debt – equivalent to 230% of its economy – and the highest among G7 countries.On Monday, the yen recovered some of its value against the dollar after speculation that the US Federal Reserve had used some of its vast resources to buy the Japanese currency.Miller, a former head of fixed income at investment giant BlackRock, said the latest lift in gold came on rising concerns that Trump’s administration would take steps to weaken the world’s most important currency, the US dollar.
“If the Federal Reserve is doing this on behalf of the US Treasury, they’re only doing it for one reason: they think the US dollar is too high,” he said.Key voices within the US administration have long suggested they would like a weaker the dollar to help revitalise the US domestic manufacturing base.A weaker dollar would undermine the value of US mainstay assets such as Treasury bonds, which has burnished gold’s allure as the ultimate store of value.Fed officials are to meet on Tuesday and Wednesday to consider their next move on interest rates amid mounting pressure from the White House to reduce the cost of borrowing at a faster pace than expected by financial markets.The US central bank is expected to hold rates at a range of 3.
5% to 3.75% this week, but could use some of its vast resources to buy yen to support the currency and at the same time weakening the dollar.The dollar lost almost 10% of its value against a basket of international currencies last year.It expected to continue falling in value in 2026 as the Fed accelerates cuts to interest rates.
National insurance hike and energy bills behind food price rise, say UK retailers
Retailers have blamed rising energy bills and the chancellor Rachel Reeves’s hike in employers’ national insurance contributions for a jump in food prices, as suppliers and supermarkets struggle to absorb higher costs.The British Retail Consortium (BRC), the trade body for retailers, said prices across all goods in shops rose by 1.5% in January compared with the same month last year, up from a 0.7% rise in December and higher than the 0.7% increase economists had been expecting
Bank of Scotland fined £160,000 over account for sanctioned Putin ally
The UK’s sanctions watchdog has fined Bank of Scotland £160,000 for opening a bank account and processing payments for an ally of Vladimir Putin.Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, who became the first person to be prosecuted for circumventing UK sanctions last year, made 24 payments totalling £77,383 to or from a personal current account during February 2023.The Russian has held senior positions in Russian government and is a former governor of Sevastopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea.The EU made Ovsiannikov a designated person under its sanctions legislation in November 2017, saying his work had compromised or threatened the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. This restricted him from entering or accessing funds in member states including the UK, then still an EU member
Georgia leads push to ban datacenters used to power America’s AI boom
Lawmakers in several states are exploring passing laws that would put statewide bans in place on building new datacenters as the issue of the power-hungry facilities has moved to the center of economic and environmental concerns in the US.In Georgia a state lawmaker has introduced a bill proposing what could become the first statewide moratorium on new datacenters in America. The bill is one of at least three statewide moratoriums on datacenters introduced in state legislatures in the last week as Maryland and Oklahoma lawmakers are also considering similar measures.But it is Georgia that is quickly becoming ground zero in the fight against untrammelled growth of datacenters – which are notorious for using huge amounts of energy and water – as they power the emerging industry of artificial intelligence.The Georgia bill seeks to halt all such projects until March of next year “to allow state, county and municipal-level officials time to set necessary policies for regulating datacenters … which permanently alter the landscape of our state”, said bill sponsor state Democratic legislator Ruwa Romman
EU launches inquiry into X over sexually explicit images made by Grok AI
The European Commission has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the production of sexually explicit images and the spreading of possible child sexual abuse material by the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok.The formal inquiry, launched on Monday, also extends an investigation into X’s recommender systems, algorithms that help users discover new content.Grok has sparked international outrage by allowing users to digitally strip women and children and put them into provocative poses. Grok AI generated about 3m sexualised images in less than two weeks, including 23,000 that appeared to depict children, according to researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate.The commission said its investigation would “assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks” stemming from Grok’s functionalities in the EU, including risks on the sharing of illegal content such as manipulated sexually explicit images and “content that may amount to” child sexual abuse material
Australian Open 2026 quarter-finals: Zverev v Tien, Sabalenka through to semis– live
Alexander Zverev* (3) 4-4 6-3 Learner Tien (25) Zverev sends a backhand into the net to open things but responds with a 204 km/h serve Tien can’t return. Tien gets on top of Zverev’s subsequent second serve but commits a frustrating error to fall further behind but Zverev then commits an unforced error of his own when he pushes a forehand out.Tien then finds an angle as Zverev charges forward and induces an error – the first point Zverev has lot coming to the net today – and brings up break point. Zverev dashes those hopes, however, and brings up deuce with an ace smashed down the T. An extended rally ends with Tien sending a backhand into the net and responding by smashing the top of his racquet into the surface in frustration
Australian Open insulates tennis from extreme heat but still faces million-dollar hit
Tens of thousands of tennis fans are expected to stay away from the Australian Open on Tuesday as temperatures climb above 40C, but the Melbourne Park grand slam has largely been able to insulate itself – physically and commercially – from the effects of extreme heat.The daytime attendance for the heat-affected Saturday was 51,048, down more than 10,000 compared with the previous and following days, and an even greater decline is expected on Tuesday given widespread publicity of the Victorian heatwave. Sales of $35 ground passes have been slow and queues at security appeared shorter than usual shortly after gates opened at 9am.Those who do attend are also less likely to spend as long at the precinct. On Saturday, Melbourne Park was largely empty when play resumed shortly after 7pm, leaving food and beverage vendors twiddling their thumbs at dinnertime when they would usually be run off their feet
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