Why a Professor of Business Isn’t Impressed by Gold’s Stunning Rally

It seems not a day goes by without gold hitting another all-time high. The rally continued on Monday with a fresh record of $4,074 per ounce.

But amid the scramble for the precious metal in 2025, a finance professor at Tulane University tells Business Insider that he doesn’t agree with most of the premise behind gold’s rapid rise.

Gold is up by about 55% this year, beating risk assets like stocks and bitcoin as investors pile in on heightened fears about everything from more inflation to geopolitical conflicts. ETFs that hold gold, meanwhile, are seeing record inflows.

Peter Ricchiuti, a professor at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, isn’t impressed.

Ricchiuti has seen gold rallies before, and he remains unconvinced by the arguments fueling the latest one. A former investing professional who now specializes in teaching equity research, Ricchiuti has criticized herd mentality among investors.

Now he sees the trend developing in the market’s frenzy for gold.

Speaking with Business Insider, he described why, even as gold enjoys its best year since the 1970s, he doesn’t see it as a good investment. In short, it’s got very little real-world utility compared to its metal-market peers.

“If you want to play aluminum or platinum or silver, they all have uses, and gold effectively has no uses,” Ricchiuti said. “It’s just in jewelry. It doesn’t help in an industrial process.”

His case against gold is similar to his argument against bitcoin, an asset that bulls often describe as “digital gold.”

“I think gold and bitcoin kind of fall in the same category,” he said. “They’re really not investments. They’re just speculation.”

Ricchiuti said the enthusiasm for gold and bitcoin was a prime example of greater fool theory, or the idea that the case for buying a particular asset is that there will always be a “greater fool” who will pay more than you did.

In his view, the problem with gold’s big rally is that investors see the gains and believe there is intrinsic value like a stock. It’s an incorrect narrative when it comes to gold, he said.

“Some people [will say] it’s just a piece of paper,” Ricchiutii said. “But it isn’t. Stocks represent growth and value. You own a percentage of that company.”

Ricchiuti said he understands the drive to diversify amid historically lofty stock prices and lingering economic uncertainty, but he’s steadfast in his belief that gold doesn’t have much use beyond being a vehicle for speculation.

Even as an inflation hedge—perhaps gold’s most frequently touted use—the stock market might be the better place for investors to hide while fiat currencies inflate their value away.

“If you’re a long-term investor and you believe in the story and you believe in management, I think over long periods of time, stocks will do much, much better,” Ricchiuti said.