The number of UK investors choosing to buy gold continues to surge, new data from world-leading marketplace BullionVault shows data today, after the price of the precious metal in British Pounds set a record 12th monthly record in a row.
Over that time, BullionVault’s UK clients have sold half-a-tonne more gold (582kg) than they bought as a group, banking £38.4 million by using the West London fintech’s online platform and mobile apps.
But while some existing investors have taken profit, new UK account openings in 2025 have already topped each of the past three full years, running 144.3% ahead of the first 7 months of 2024. That contrasts with a rise of 100.3% across the rest of the world.
“Gold thrives on uncertainty, and Donald Trump’s second term in the White House continues to wrong-foot financial markets just as much as it does America’s trading and political partners,” says BullionVault director of research Adrian Ash.
But it’s a sign of how poorly the international markets now see the UK that underlying gold prices keep striking new all-time highs against the Pound. Domestic investors and savers clearly agree with that gloom. The number of people starting to buy securely-stored bullion is running at its highest since the pandemic.
Launched in 2005, BullionVault today cares for a record £3.5 billion of gold belonging to its global client-base of more than 115,000 users, plus a record £1.0bn in silver. Available to trade from as little as 1 gram at a time, each user’s metal is held in the form of large wholesale bullion bars, stored and insured in the client’s choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or Zurich.
Tracking the total number of gold buyers versus sellers each month, the Gold Investor Index UK fell in July, dropping 2.9 points to a 6-month low of 54.5.
But that only put the GII UK back in line with its long-term average of 54.7, and it remained above the Rest-of-World index for the 9th month in a row with a reading 0.5 points higher.
The Gold Investor Index would read 50.0 if the number of buyers was matched by the number of sellers. The UK series set a decade-high of 63.1 when the country went into pandemic lockdown in March 2020, and it set an all-time low of 47.3 in March 2024 as a jump in gold prices spurred record-heavy profit-taking.
While the Pound’s steep drop on the FX market is helping boost London’s stock market as well as the price of gold,” says Ash, “it’s clear that financial markets worldwide want to push higher despite the latest chaos from the Trump White House.
In precious metals, and in addition to holding gold as a form of financial insurance, that means looking beyond the ‘safe haven’ towards silver as a pro-growth, industrially-useful alternative.
The UK price of silver set its 4th new month-average record of 2025 so far in July, rising 23.1% in Pound terms since the start of August last year.
That gain would have been entirely erased if not reversed for UK investors choosing silver coins, because those ‘retail’ units carry 20% VAT sales tax when you buy plus an additional loss as bad as 30% when you try selling back to the shop.
Sidestepping VAT and enjoying total trading costs as low as 1.0% on securely stored wholesale bullion, UK clients of BullionVault have over the past 12 months sold 11.5 tonnes more silver than they bought as a group, banking £8.6m between them.
Last month the Silver Investor Index UK rebounded by 1.7 points from June’s 5-month low of 50.0, higher than the rest of the world by 0.2 points.
With fears of recession and hopes for US rate cuts inviting new inflows to precious metals, domestic issues such as the UK’s economic slowdown are also helping support demand,” says Ash.
But price action over the past week shows how Trump is really still driving global gold investment, pushing up gold in UK Pound terms by another 2.2% higher from July’s record so far in August with his attack on the political independence of Washington’s central bank and statistics agencies.
