Gold sentiment among UK investors and savers has leapt to levels only seen during extreme crisis events, new data from world-leading marketplace BullionVault shows today, as gold spikes to fresh record prices, spurring a near-record number of people to start buying precious metals for the first time.
Gaining and then losing £350 per Troy ounce in October, the price of gold continued to trend higher, setting its 15th new month-average record in a row above £3,000.
Worldwide web traffic to BullionVault − now caring for £5.8 billion of precious metal for its clients, 9-in-10 of whom live in Western Europe or North America − hit the heaviest since October 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the all-out panic phase of the global financial crisis.
The number of UK residents starting to use the West London fintech for the first time meantime jumped by 68.3% from what was already a 4-year high in September, hitting the highest figure since August 2011. That month saw global stock markets tumble as the Eurozone debt crisis spread to Spain and Italy, US government bonds lost their ‘risk-free’ credit rating, and England suffered its worst rioting in over 200 years.
“Since BullionVault opened 20 years ago,” says director of research Adrian Ash, “gold investing sentiment has only been stronger during the global financial crisis, the shock of Trump’s first election win, and the Covid pandemic.
“Because 2025 lacks any clear and present panic, it’s easy to cast gold as a bubble, fuelled by FOMO at new record prices. But while the fear-of-missing-out undoubtedly pulled in some hot money at gold’s recent highs, the underlying uptrend signals a deeper crisis of confidence in the established order, led by the USA’s geopolitical dominance.
“What’s also different today is that private investors in the West, as a group, now hold large stockpiles of gold which they built during the past two decades’ crises. That means profit-taking, like new buying, is running at historic levels, capping net demand overall and curbing the sense of a mania or gold rush.”
Last month’s record-high UK Pound gold prices drew the largest number of UK sellers on BullionVault since August 2020, rising 29.8% from September’s figure.
The number of UK residents buying gold rose faster, however, up 37.3% to the most since the record of September 2011.
Together, that took the Gold Investor Index UK to its highest since August 2020, rising 2.9 points to read 60.0 in October.
The Gold Investor Index would read 50.0 if the number of net buyers exactly matched the number of net sellers across the month. The UK series hit a peak of 72.4 in September 2011, peaked at 63.1 in March 2020, and hit a low of 47.3 in March 2024.
By weight last month, global demand for gold reversed the previous two months of light liquidation to take BullionVault’s total client holdings back up to 44.0 tonnes, now worth a record £4.3 billion.
Silver, in contrast, saw net selling shrink the total quantity of silver now belonging to BullionVault’s global user-base by just less than 1.0 tonne (820kg), down to a 3-month low of 1,154 tonnes worth a new record £1.3bn.
October saw silver priced in UK Pounds set a 5th new month-average record in a row, trading at £37 per Troy ounce across the month.
The Silver Investor Index UK jumped by 4.5 points to read 61.8, the highest since January 2021, as the number of buyers rose 60.2% and sellers rose 53.8%, both hitting their largest size since that month marked the peak of the #silversqueeze ramp on social media amid the ongoing pandemic lockdowns.
“As with gold,” says Adrian, “silver investing sentiment faded the start of this current bull market, lagging the upmove as profit-taking prevailed.
“The pace of new investing is now easing back from October’s surge, but it remains sharply higher year-over-year.”