○ In 2025, gold prices surged 65% year-to-date, marking the steepest rally since the Second Oil Shock. Conventional analytical models are proving insufficient to fully explain this recent price spike.

• Gold returns last year were 2 to 3 times higher than those of other major asset classes, including equities, commodities, and bonds.

• Traditional drivers—such as economic expansion, risk/uncertainty, and opportunity cost (interest rates/exchange rates)—account for less than 50% of recent price movements. This underscores that the gold market is undergoing a fundamental structural shift.

○ This structural shift originated from massive gold acquisitions by emerging market central banks after 2022. By increasing gold reserves annually regardless of price, these institutions signal an emerging polarization—or structural fragmentation—of global safe-haven assets.

• Emerging market central banks have actively accumulated gold due to escalating tensions with the U.S., geopolitical risks, and efforts to diversify oil-money portfolios.

• While emerging markets show a trend of selling U.S. Treasuries—traditionally considered the benchmark safe asset—advanced economies such as the U.K., France, Canada, Norway, and South Korea continue to purchase U.S. Treasuries.

• Meanwhile, concerns over fiat currency debasement driven by rising global sovereign debt have further fueled demand for gold as a physical safe-haven asset.

○ The weakening role of the U.S. dollar, which historically served as a mirror for asset and commodity prices, implies a breakdown in traditional correlations among financial indicators. Consequently, there is a growing need to incorporate new variables into analytical models when monitoring commodities and exchange rates.v

○ As the divergence in safe-haven preferences between advanced economies (U.S. Treasuries) and emerging economies (Gold) intensifies, in-depth research is imperative to analyze the impacts of structural financial "fragmentation" and establish strategic counter-responses.