Gold fever is sweeping through Britain once again. Data from BullionVault, the world’s largest online precious metals marketplace, show that UK investors and savers are buying gold at a pace last seen during episodes of outright financial panic, the sort of moments when the world feels as if it’s teetering on the edge.
In October alone, the number of Britons opening new BullionVault accounts surged by 68 per cent to the highest level in 14 years. That last comparable rush came in August 2011, a month of collapsing stock markets, eurozone contagion, and rioting in English cities. The parallel, it seems, is less about chaos in the streets than anxiety in the markets.
Gold’s recent behaviour has been enough to rattle even the calmest nerves. Priced in pounds sterling, it has notched up fifteen consecutive month-average record highs, holding above £3,000 per troy ounce despite a rollercoaster October that saw a £350 swing between its monthly high and low.
BullionVault, headquartered in west London, now holds £5.8 billion of client precious metals, with nine in ten of its customers based in Western Europe or North America. Web traffic to the site in October was the heaviest since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, an ominous echo from the past.
What’s special about the new gold rush in London?
What makes this rush intriguing is that it’s happening without a singular, obvious trigger. As Adrian Ash, BullionVault’s director of research, puts it: “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 — but what we’re seeing instead is a deeper crisis of confidence in the established order, led by the USA’s geopolitical dominance.”
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That underlying anxiety may explain why both buyers and sellers are active in record numbers. Profit-taking and fresh demand are running neck and neck. The number of UK residents selling gold through BullionVault rose by nearly 30 per cent last month, but new buyers climbed even faster — up 37 per cent to the highest level since the frenzy of 2011.
The result was a sharp rise in the Gold Investor Index, a proprietary measure of sentiment which would read 50.0 if the number of buyers and sellers were perfectly balanced. The UK index jumped 2.9 points to 60.0 in October — its strongest reading since August 2020, the summer of pandemic-era panic buying. By weight, global demand reversed two months of liquidation, lifting total client holdings back to 44 tonnes worth a record £4.3 billion.
Silver’s quiet revival
Silver, meanwhile, quietly staged its own revival. Prices set a fifth consecutive month-average record, averaging £37 per troy ounce. The Silver Investor Index jumped by 4.5 points to 61.8, its highest since the meme-fuelled “#silversqueeze” of early 2021, as the number of buyers rose 60 per cent and sellers 54 per cent.
Still, Ash insists that this is no gold rush, at least not in the speculative sense. “Private investors in the West already hold large stockpiles of gold built up over two decades of crises,” he says. “That means new buying and profit-taking are both running at historic levels, capping net demand and preventing a mania.”
Perhaps that’s the real story here. After years of monetary experimentation, endless elections, and great-power brinkmanship, Britons are not betting on the end of the world, just quietly hedging against its ongoing unpredictability. In the age of instability, gold, it seems, has become less of a panic button and more of a permanent insurance policy.
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