Everyone’s Hedging With Gold — Should You?

TL;DR

1. 42% of fund managers pick gold as 2025’s top asset

2. Nvidia, AMD sink as U.S. blocks chip sales to China

3. Beijing counters tariff pressures, exposing U.S. supply chain weaknesses 

4. Antitrust trial against Meta could break off Instagram and WhatsApp

Wall Street Hedges Uncertainty With Gold

Gold hit a record-high last week, surpassing $3,300 per ounce for the first time in history. Year to date, gold is up 25%, outperforming nearly every major asset class. 

Gold has a history of outperforming during recessions, thanks to its scarcity and 5,000-year track record as a reliable store of value. It’s also getting a structural lift as central banks globally diversify reserves out of U.S. dollars and into gold.

Gold’s countercyclical behavior makes it a classic portfolio hedge when equities and credit markets decline. Bitcoin, supposedly the ultimate doomsday asset, is down 10% year to date — right in line with the S&P 500. 

According to Bank of America’s latest fund manager survey, 42% now expect gold to be the best-performing asset in 2025. That surge in sentiment has also made “long gold” the most-crowded trade on Wall Street, overtaking the Magnificent Seven for the first time in two years.

A gold hedge? Gold can add meaningful diversification to a portfolio and help cushion losses during periods of market underperformance. 

• Investors can gain exposure through physical gold, gold futures, gold ETFs, or mining stocks. 

• For most investors, ETFs like SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) are the most practical option, as they’re liquid, low-cost, and easy to buy or sell. 

Gold is a hedge, not a growth engine. A $100 investment in gold in 1972 would have been worth around $4,500 in 2024. If you made the same investment in the S&P 500, it would have grown to over $18,500. Most advisors recommend keeping 5% to 10% of your portfolio in gold.

New Chip Export Restrictions Pummel Nvidia and AMD

The Trump administration announced new restrictions on AI chip exports to China, blocking sales of Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s MI308 chips. The move will cost Nvidia an estimated $5.5 billion in inventory writedowns and AMD $800 million. Shares of both companies fell around 7%, dragging the Nasdaq down nearly 2%.

Nvidia’s H20 chips were specifically designed to comply with the Biden administration’s export rules and had become critical for Chinese AI firms — including DeepSeek, whose January debut rattled the U.S. AI landscape. But with no export licenses ever granted into China for GPUs, the new order effectively shuts Nvidia out of the Chinese market, which made up 13% of its revenue last year.

• Chinese cloud-service providers originally planned to source 50% of AI accelerator demand in 2025 using H20 processors. They will now likely turn to domestic producers such as Huawei and Cambricon. 

The fallout rippled across the semiconductor sector. Broadcom and Micron dipped on fears of broader export controls. ASML fell 5% after reporting a 20% QoQ drop in sales, citing client pullback on tariff concerns. The exception was TSMC, which rose 2% after reporting that profits increased 60% last quarter.

Since January, Nvidia has shed $1.2 trillion in market cap — more than the value of Berkshire Hathaway.

Everything's been turned upside down. Republicans used to be the party of free markets. The argument is solid: Let great companies run, and they’ll create jobs, prosperity, and innovation. It’s one reason the U.S. has outpaced Europe — fewer regulations, less friction, more ROI.

I initially supported chip bans to China, thinking they’d block the development of military-grade tech. But China just found workarounds, like DeepSeek. We're not stopping them; we’re just motivating them to build alternatives. Long term, this may actually tilt the playing field in their favor.

Regarding the impact on our chip industry, if any company can absorb the hit, it’s Nvidia. But the real cost here is the distraction. Instead of building better chips, it’s burning time navigating policy red tape. This is exactly what Republicans have historically advocated against. 

____________sponsored content ____________

____________sponsored content ____________

Trade War: China Retaliates Against U.S.

The U.S.-China trade war is no longer just about tariffs: It's evolving into a global influence campaign.

Beijing’s counterpunch combines economic and geopolitical pressures. It has ordered domestic airlines to pause orders from Boeing, America’s largest exporter, and it has restricted rare earth metal exports to the U.S. These minerals are critical for the production of high-tech products, including F-35 jets, EV motors, satellites, and semiconductors. China is the dominant gatekeeper, controlling 70% of rare earth mining and 90% of processing.

China’s foreign policy pivot is also consequential. Xi Jinping just wrapped up a Southeast Asia tour, pushing an “Asian family” narrative and clinching cooperation pacts with Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia. The goal: deepen trade ties and create a regional alliance against the U.S. 

Goldman Sachs research reveals that the U.S. is far more reliant on Chinese imports than China is on American goods. 

• Over 36% of U.S. imports from China are in categories where Beijing supplies more than 70% of the goods, meaning American companies will have to scramble to find alternative sources. 

• By contrast, only 10% of China’s imports from the U.S. show that kind of dependence​. 

China has been decoupling from the U.S. faster than the U.S. is decoupling from China.

All of this is ostensibly about bringing back manufacturing jobs. But does anyone actually want those jobs? A Cato survey found that while most Americans say the country would benefit from more manufacturing, only 1 in 4 would take a factory job themselves in lieu of their current position. 

And the U.S. is already a manufacturing powerhouse — just not in the same way that China is. U.S. manufacturing output has actually risen over the past four decades, even as factory jobs have declined, thanks to massive productivity gains. American manufacturing specializes in higher-value goods, pays higher wages, and employs fewer, highly-skilled workers.

Measured by value added per employee, U.S. manufacturing ranks first among major economies — nearly 7x that of China.

You can’t declare war on everyone all at once. Trump’s trade war is basically a case study in how not to negotiate. Negotiation 101: Don’t insult your counterpart, and always demonstrate a credible willingness to walk away. We’ve done neither. Now, China is running the geopolitical offense while we’re busy picking fights with allies and driving neutral countries straight into Beijing’s arms. Canada’s pissed. Denmark retailers are boycotting U.S. brands. Even small players like Côte d’Ivoire are cutting side deals with the EU. We’re acting like we’re still the only game in town, but we’re 5% of the population trying to police 25% of the global economy, and it’s backfiring. 

Meta Antitrust Trial Begins

The FTC’s landmark antitrust trial against Meta kicked off last week, alleging the company locked in its social media dominance by acquiring, not outcompeting, rising threats like Instagram and WhatsApp. 

At the heart of the case is how the market is defined. The FTC argues Meta competes in the personal social networking market, a narrow category that excludes TikTok, YouTube, and X. 

• Under that definition, Meta controls ~78% of the U.S. market by total monthly users. Its chief competition? Snap, a firm roughly one-hundredth of Meta’s market cap. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg disagreed, suggesting instead that his company competes in “a broad discovery-entertainment space." Measured by time spent across social media apps such as TikTok, YouTube, and X, Meta’s market share is closer to 30%.

In March, Zuckerberg called the FTC and offered to settle the case for $450 million (roughly equivalent to one day of Meta’s revenue) and later raised his bid to $1 billion. The FTC said it wouldn’t settle for anything less than $18 billion.

• The political angle: Zuckerberg lobbied Trump directly to drop the case, even donating $1 million to his inauguration and settling a lawsuit over Trump’s suspended accounts. But Trump hasn’t stepped in, and the new FTC chair, Andrew N. Ferguson, appears unmoved. If the government prevails, it could force Meta to sell WhatsApp and Instagram. 

Let’s be honest: Meta should’ve been broken up five years ago. One firm controls 70% of all social media, and it has used that dominance to extract not just economic rents but also social ones — on our attention, our kids, our democracy. 

Breaking Meta up wouldn’t just be good policy; it would be good business. Instagram on its own would trade at a higher revenue multiple, and WhatsApp could become the world’s largest telco if Zuck wasn’t just using it as a body bag of data for the Facebook core. Society wins, shareholders win, competition wins. The only losers? People clinging to the fiction that Meta’s “innovation” wasn’t just acquisition dressed up as strategy.

There’s never been a better moment for a Fortune 500 CEO to show up and take a stand against Trump’s chaos. Enough with the 4D chess rationalizations. Someone is going to find a polite way to say: You’re a f*cking idiot, and we’re not down with this.

There’s real consumer upside here, and the perfect brand for it is Nike. The stock’s at a 10-year low, the new CEO’s still in his honeymoon phase, and the company has a history of leaning into politics. It could channel what sport represents — fair play, meritocracy, people coming together from diverse backgrounds — and make a powerful statement: What’s happening isn’t American.

Scott sits down with Mark Carney, Canada’s 24th prime minister, to tackle Canada’s economic outlook, its role in the shifting global order, and the potential for mending the U.S.-Canada relationship. Listen here.

Mia’s Bonus Reads

1. Trump is redecorating the White House in gold 

2. A record number of used Teslas are for sale

3. Millionaire teens are racing their sperm