Follow the Leader
Having previously warned of the regulatory risks presented by platforms that enable users to monitor and copy trades made by successful traders, Robinhood seems to have decided that if you can’t beat them (or maybe more to the point, they have beaten the regulators), you might as well join them.
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This move is designed to tap into the growing impact of ‘finfluencers’, with research suggesting a large percentage of US-based traders now base their trades on information from social media.
While copy trading is nothing new, Robinhood has two major factors in its favour — the first of which is scale. Recent estimates suggest it has in the region of 25 million active traders, so it is easy to see how trading volumes could take off if the feedback from the initial group of traders is positive.
Then there is the verification process. Robinhood’s copy-trading system will confirm trades in real time, enabling users to view precisely when and how positions are initiated and terminated, as well as to monitor other traders and keep track of trades that are publicly disclosed by politicians and hedge funds.
Introducing Robinhood Social. Coming next year.
Show off your recent gains, discuss strategies, follow your favorite traders, and make market moves in real-time.#RobinhoodPresents https://t.co/cLhiCw7bpH pic.twitter.com/LYaLgkcuuM
— Robinhood (@RobinhoodApp) September 10, 2025
Every trader on Robinhood Social will be required to verify their identity and will have to prove that their claimed portfolios and positions are legitimate.
Robinhood is keen to stress that users will have to choose to copy trades rather than have them executed automatically when the service launches in the US early next year. This is an important distinction that it hopes will satisfy regulators that it is not offering investment advice and will avoid coming under the aegis of the Investment Advisers Act.
Although supporting manual rather than automatic duplication of trades should leave the firm firmly in broker territory from a regulatory perspective, it will still have to verify the stated performance of high-performing traders and include plenty of warnings about the risk factors.
The move also raises concerns that inexperienced traders will follow the strategy of whoever happens to be doing well at the time without thinking about how long that approach has been used or when to change tack. As the familiar disclaimer puts it, ‘past performance is not indicative of future results’.
All that Sparkles…
The recent surge in gold prices shows no sign of letting up. As this column is being written, the precious metal has breached $4,100 per ounce for the first time on the back of geopolitical and economic concerns, aggressive buying by central banks and the prospect of further reductions in US interest rates.
Bank of America is just one of the major financial institutions predicting that an ounce of gold will be worth at least $5,000 by the end of next year, and the growth in value has been matched by increased interest in prospecting as aspiring miners pick up their shovels and start fossicking.
Read more updates on gold prices: Gold Price Prediction from Bank of America Eyes $5,000 Amid New Record Today
While anticipating a more modest average value in 2026, Deutsche Bank Research’s precious-metals analyst says the current environment remains highly conducive to further upside, outweighing the potential for a correction.
According to Michael Hsueh, a weaker US dollar creates a powerful tailwind for gold, while lower-than-expected levels of recycled gold supply are contributing to a tighter market, further bolstering the case for higher prices. Inflows into gold ETFs remain strong and there is no indication that central banks will significantly reduce their purchasing programmes any time soon.
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The World Gold Council offers an interesting take on whether recent price rises signal a continuation of a trend or the start of a reversal.
As it noted when gold surpassed $3,000 per ounce, round-number milestones carry more psychological and technical weight than fundamental meaning — and it’s not just gold’s performance in a single year, but the length and underlying drivers of a bull run that should be the centre of attention. For example, gold’s recent run remains below the average duration and magnitude of previous bull runs.
WATCH: The price of gold keeps soaring past records, up 56% this year. What’s new is that demand is being driven by retail investors buying gold ETFs pic.twitter.com/BIXaoSiNdR
— Reuters Business (@ReutersBiz) October 14, 2025
A new study by BeCoin market analyst Saqib Iqbal offers an interesting view on attitudes to gold as a safe-haven asset. His research found a roughly even split between those who believed Bitcoin offered greater upside than gold and those who still saw the latter as the safer hedge, suggesting that investors might be rewiring their definition of safety, trading centuries of trust in gold for the narrative momentum of digital scarcity.
Are Bonds Shaken or Just Stirred?
A post on the evolution of the treasury bond market caught my eye recently. Setting out to determine where bonds sit in relation to US equities since the former are seen as a natural hedge to the latter, it notes that bonds performed this function very efficiently during periods of low and stable inflation. However, it’s a different story when inflation is high.
Independent macro strategist Tom Bradshaw accepts that bonds are substantially less overvalued than they were in 2020 and that a US recession would likely cause helpful deflationary shocks. But he warns that they remain overvalued and unlikely to provide a significant wealth-generating opportunity in the years ahead.
Interestingly, he says his focus is on gold and silver, which tallies with the findings of research conducted by Royal London Asset Management mapping financial market behaviour during US Federal Reserve easing cycles since the 1980s.
The firm found that since September 2024 — a period in which the price of gold has risen by half — bonds generated virtually no returns. Its head of multi-asset observed that while equity performance was roughly where it might be expected to be in a rate-easing cycle, bonds are suffering from the capital losses resulting from rising yields.
This is not just a US phenomenon either. Gold has also significantly outperformed the UK stock market in 2025.
Any notable increase in allocations to gold by pension funds and other asset managers would give the market another major boost, given that many asset managers have modest gold holdings.