Gold — typically a safe haven in times of turmoil — is soaring while the stock market hits new highs, an unusual dynamic troubling some market insiders.

Why it matters: The rally in gold reflects investor desire to diversify away from dollar-denominated assets as trust in the U.S. slowly erodes, they say.

Driving the news: Gold futures yesterday topped a record high of over $4,000 an ounce for the first time, putting the precious metal on track for its best year since 1979, a year of double-digit inflation, a Mideast oil crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So far in 2025, the price of gold is up 51%.

What they're saying: "People are willing to go long U.S. enterprise, and they want to short the mess," Mohamed El-Erian, former CEO of asset manager Pimco and current president of Queen's College in Cambridge, tells Axios.

• "People are starting to lose trust in institutions," says Ryan McIntyre, senior managing partner at Sprott, which focuses on precious metals, noting the gold rally comes as people are "reassessing what they view as safe."
• The gold rally also comes amid President Trump's trade war and, now, a government shutdown that started a week ago with no end in sight.
• "For the rest of the world, we're weaponizing the tools of economic policy," El-Erian says. The concern is that slowly, over time, the gold rally starts to indicate an eroding belief in "what makes the U.S. special," he adds.

Between the lines: While gold and U.S. stocks are surging, the U.S. dollar is down over 9% against a basket of other currencies so far this year.

• That indicates that investors want exposure to corporate America's resilience, but they don't want what Citadel CEO Ken Griffin called "sovereign risk" in an interview with Bloomberg.
• That flight to gold to try to "de-dollarize" is concerning, he said, given what it says about sentiment around the U.S. dollar, the global reserve currency.

Follow the money: What else is powering the gold rally?

• Central banks: Central banks of other nations are looking to diversify their reserves after overallocating to the U.S. dollar. These banks "have enormous buying ability," El-Erian notes.
• Speculation: As central banks buy gold, pushing up the price, speculators come in, adding more fuel to the rally.
• No competition: Once, investors seeking safety had no alternative to U.S. Treasuries. Now, "there's no alternative to gold," McIntyre says.
• Uncertainty: Concerns about a possible resurgence in inflation, the U.S. debt load, and economic and policy uncertainty are driving people to look "outside the financial system" for assets like bitcoin and gold.

Yes, but: "I wouldn't call it strict de-dollarization," Jay Barry, managing director and global rates strategist at JPMorgan, tells Axios.

• Barry points to continued high demand from foreign banks for U.S. Treasuries, which would not indicate any unease about the dollar.

What we're watching: Whether the Trump administration starts to consider the rally in gold amid the decline of the dollar as a potential risk.

More billionaires are bullish on bullion.

Why it matters: Some of the most successful investors in the world are now signaling that the powerful rally in gold prices has more room to run.

What they're saying: "You would probably have something like 15% of your portfolio in gold, because it is one asset that does very well when the typical parts of the portfolio go down," Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio said at a conference in Greenwich, Connecticut, CNBC reported.

• "I'd want to have a combination of gold, crypto, probably the Nasdaq," hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones told CNBC, adding that he sees longevity in these trades heading into next year.

Zoom out: It's not just the billionaires.

• Goldman Sachs raised its end of 2026 price target on gold to $4,900, citing western ETF inflows and central bank buying as sticky factors.
• Mike Wilson, chief U.S. equity strategist with Morgan Stanley, said instead of the conventional portfolio of 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds, investors should be 60/20/20, with 20% of their portfolio allocated to gold.

Yes, but: "Everybody's bullish on gold," Joe Tigay, portfolio manager at Rational Equity Armor Fund and Catalyst Hedged Equity Fund, tells Axios.

• That "seems closer to an end of cycle rally" than AI, given that gold buyers seem more uniformly optimistic than tech investors, he says.
• RBC notes the recent gold surge is "quickly becoming overbought short-term with a pullback likely in the coming weeks."

The bottom line: "This is a trend that's going to feed on itself," Rob Haworth, commodities strategist at U.S. Bank, tells Axios, adding that billionaires may be using gold to hedge risk rather than to generate alpha.

Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, set a new all-time high twice on Monday, finally breaking through $126,000 for the first time.

Why it matters: Gold is not the only rallying alternative to the dollar.

What they're saying: We asked Mark Cuban if the billionaire was buying gold. He responded: "Digital gold. Btc."

The big picture: For explanations behind the bitcoin rally, we could point to expected interest rate cuts, a brightened Wall Street outlook, or flows into exchange-traded products as significant contributing factors.

• The government shutdown has also provided extra juice for the "dollar debasement" trade, with bitcoin rising over 12% in a little over a week.
• The truth is bitcoin has been on a slow and steady upward march since early 2024, after courts made the Securities and Exchange Commission greenlight those ETFs, and President Trump took the industry under his wing.

Friction points: In past booms, bitcoin caught everyone's attention because the market would suddenly turn parabolic, minting overnight millionaires.

• Call this one the long parabola. Bitcoin has tripled in value since February 2024, without meaningful drops.

State of play: Recent surge aside, the slow-for-crypto climb appears to be driven by mainstream institutions gradually integrating this asset into the global financial system.

The bottom line: Less than two years ago, everyone thought $100,000 bitcoin was a cute meme, but now it's the status quo.