John Paulson Goes All-In on Gold: Bull Market Is Just Starting

John Paulson, the man who made billions betting against mortgage debt in 2008, is now making his next big call: gold is the trade of a generation, and most people are still sleeping on it. In two separate CNBC appearances, Paulson argued that gold is in the early stages of a long-term bull market, driven by eroding faith in fiat currencies and relentless buying from central banks and private investors alike. He is so convinced he just became co-chair of NovaGold, whose shares popped 3.5% on the news. The man puts his money where his macro thesis is.

The core argument is not complicated: paper currencies are being debased, central banks know it, and gold is quietly becoming the world's preferred reserve asset. $GLD has already climbed more than 20% over the past year, even after pulling back roughly $1,000 from its highs. Paulson says that pullback is noise, not signal. Meanwhile, Bloomberg's wealth management segment noted that central banks now hold 29% of reserves in gold, and next-gen wealth clients are being advised to allocate 5-8% of portfolios to the metal. The institutional case is building quietly and steadily.

But here is where it gets interesting: not everyone is in pure accumulation mode. The Morningstar team flagged gold's run in the context of broader portfolio construction, and some wealth managers are still debating whether Bitcoin deserves a seat at the same table as a store-of-value hedge. Andrei Jikh's channel dropped a data point that should give any gold bull pause: US margin debt just hit 4.5% of GDP, the highest level ever recorded, eclipsing the dot-com bubble, 2008, and the 2021 meme stock mania. When leverage is this stretched, even the right trades can get hurt on the way down before they go up.

Over on the Investor's Business Daily channel, the thesis took a sharper edge. The host argued the AI trade is working as a stock speculation vehicle, but the actual AI industry is dangerously concentrated, with OpenAI and Anthropic making up 89% of revenues among the largest AI companies. That kind of concentration drives capital toward perceived safe havens, and gold tends to benefit when tech narratives start wobbling. If the AI earnings season disappoints (Alphabet reports after the bell and the whisper number on Google Cloud is closer to 70% growth, not the official 63% bar), expect gold to catch a fresh bid.

The HSBC strategist on Bloomberg Surveillance also warned that long-only investor sentiment is approaching 2021 reopening-trade levels of bullishness, a stretch that historically precedes a rotation rather than a melt-up. If equities hiccup into September, the gold bull case does not need Paulson to be right about everything. It just needs him to be right about one thing: that when trust in systems erodes, people reach for the oldest financial asset on earth.

Paulson beat the housing crisis by being early, being right, and being patient. He is clearly comfortable with that playbook.