Beirut, Lebanon – Simon Bouri sat behind the desk of his Beirut-based jewellery store, smoking a cigarette and answering calls from a client. Next to him, Aziz Arida fiddled with a beaded masbaha, also known as worry beads.
Simon has worked in the jewellery sector for decades. But a recent rise and spike in the price of gold and silver has thrown many in the industry for a loop. By Wednesday, the gold price hovered at about $5,000 per troy ounce (31.1g), somewhere in between the recent high of $5,595 and the low of about $4,600.
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“We cannot predict anything,” Simon said. “It’s crazy.”
“Have you seen a 20 percent fluctuation in one day before?” Simon asked, turning to Aziz, incredulously. Aziz works in commodities, such as wheat and other perishable items.
“Only once,” Aziz replied sombrely. “Chornobyl.”
The disaster concerning a nuclear power plant in Ukraine shot wheat prices up in 1986. But unlike in that infamous incident, there is still no single widely understood and identifiable act or reason as to why gold and silver have gone through such a radical fluctuation in such a short period of time.
‘Nobody understands this’
Since 2019, Lebanon has been in one of modern history’s worst economic and banking crises. But even before then, many Lebanese have looked to invest in precious metals, particularly gold, as a way to protect their money from inflation.
Whereas banks have lost the public’s trust, gold has widely been seen as a safe investment whose value has grown steadily. Precious metals have historically gained buyers during periods of geopolitical or economic uncertainty.
The last year has witnessed plenty of instability around the world, and particularly in the Middle East. Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States, his leveraging of tariffs, his pressure on the independence of the Federal Reserve, threats to take over Greenland, intervention in Venezuela, and threats of a war with Iran have all contributed to a volatile cocktail of instability.
When asked about the serious fluctuations, one Beiruti jeweller, who didn’t want to give his name, responded with a pithy statement. “Go ask Trump,” he said.
“Nobody understands this,” said Khodr, who only wished to give his first name. Seated behind a table at a jewellery store in Beirut, gold rings were visible next to him in a glass case on a perpendicular table.
He said the effects of the sharp fluctuation in costs are still being understood, but admitted that there has been an impact on his business.
“Work has slowed down,” he said.
‘There’s no logic’
Analysts are split on the cause of the rapid change in valuation. Some speculate that more stable economic conditions and the dollar’s rise led investors to sell when the valuation was at a high.
Others disagree. They say the drop was a course correction and reflected that the commodity had become overvalued.
Going forward, however, some financial analysts said they expect gold to continue rising, with JP Morgan analysts saying it could increase in value by 30 percent before the end of 2026.
But it may still take some time before buyers, or jewellers, feel comfortable buying gold again.
“It makes no sense,” Simon, the jeweller, said. “The price shouldn’t be this high. The cost of mining and turning it into bars did not change.
“There’s no logic,” Aziz added. “It’s all speculation.”
Affecting business
Lebanon is currently debating a gap law that would, in theory, return to depositors some of the money they have been prevented from accessing by banks since 2019.
Since then, the country has had a severe liquidity crisis, and the currency has depreciated by more than 90 percent. Today, many rely on remittances from family working abroad. From 2020 to 2024, Lebanon averaged $6.38bn per year on remittances. That figure dropped to $5.8bn in 2024.
But many in Lebanon have long held a fragile trust in banks and the financial system, even before the crisis. For an older generation of Lebanese, 2019 was not the first time the currency spiralled in their lifetime. Many who had invested in the country lost money during the civil war when the Lebanese lira fell from about three to the US dollar to more than 1,000.
Gold has therefore been seen as a relatively safe investment for Lebanese.
Seeing the sharp spike in cost per ounce will have led some in the country to try to sell some of their gold. But jewellers like Simon are hesitant to buy at the moment.
“It’s definitely affecting business,” Simon said. “Yesterday, a customer wanted to sell me something with gold, but I couldn’t buy it. What if I bought it from him for a certain price, and the second day it costs 10 to 20 percent less?”
