Why Central Banks and Big Investors Keep Buying Gold and Silver

The following article is offered for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, investment advice. Speak with your broker about what suits your financial goals.

There’s a pattern worth noticing: when the economy gets shaky, central banks and large investors tend to buy gold and silver. Over the past few years they’ve been doing it at a pace that stands out even by historical standards.

The headline number

The headline number comes from central banks. According to the World Gold Council, they bought more than 1,000 tonnes of gold in each of 2022, 2023, and 2024, roughly double the pace of the previous decade. 2024 alone added about 1,045 tonnes. The buying cooled in 2025 to 863 tonnes, but even that was the fourth-largest year on record and well above the 400-to-500-tonne annual average central banks ran from 2010 to 2021. They’re adding to reserves, not trimming them, and that scale of official-sector demand puts a steady floor under the market. It also tells you how the institutions with the best information are thinking about risk.

Three reasons the buying continues

The reasons are fairly consistent. The first is protection against inflation and a weakening currency: gold and silver tend to hold their purchasing power over long stretches, which makes them a hedge when money is losing value. The second is uncertainty itself. During recessions, banking scares, and geopolitical flare-ups, metal is the asset people reach for, because it has held value through every previous crisis.

The third reason is diversification, and it’s the most practical one. Gold and silver often move independently of stocks and bonds, sometimes in the opposite direction. Holding some means a bad year in equities doesn’t drag your entire portfolio down with it. That logic works the same whether you’re a central bank managing reserves or an individual managing a retirement account.

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When the largest and best-informed buyers keep accumulating metal anyway, it’s worth asking what they’re preparing for.

What stands out is that the buying has continued across very different conditions, including the recent stretch of higher interest rates that would normally pull money toward bonds instead. You don’t need a central bank’s balance sheet to apply the same logic, opening a Caymans account puts allocated metal in your name at wholesale.

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