Brett Arends

Tue, May 20, 2025, 9:03 AM6 min read

The latest Gallup survey makes for yet more depressing reading about the great American public and all the ways we find to set fire to our hard-earned money.

Ordinary investors overvalue real estate, savings accounts and certificates of deposit as long-term investments, the poll shows. They undervalue stocks and bonds. This has been going on for years. Decades.

• Morgan Stanley turns bullish on U.S. stocks. Here’s why it says the market lows have already been made.

• Stocks tally worst session in a month as weak bond-market auction has investors wondering how U.S. will manage its debt

• My brother’s ‘good daughter’ siphoned $70,000 from her father’s accounts. Should she still get an inheritance?

• 30-year Treasury yield is above 5% again — that’s usually a bad sign for stocks

• ‘They will drown you too’: My coworker found out I inherited money — and harassed me to give him a loan

Meanwhile gold swings in and out of fashion, depending on the price. But even that doesn’t work the way it should. The more expensive gold gets, the more the public likes it as a long-term investment.

Buy high, sell low, baby!

I guess the good news is that all those who are obsessed with their taxes — while ignoring all their other costs — can enjoy the massive tax deductions that come with losing money on your investments.

The latest poll was conducted early last month, during and immediately after President Donald Trump’s triumphant six-day trade war against the rest of the world. This may have skewed the results.

As gold has been booming this year, hitting a record $3,444 an ounce last month, it’s no surprise to find that Joe and Joanna Q. Public are warming to it. The latest poll shows it moving up into second place, still well behind real estate but ahead of stocks. Some 23% said the yellow metal was “the best long-term investment,” a jump of 5 points from last year.

Back in 2019, when gold was barely a third of its current price, it ranked fourth in the Gallup poll, at 14%.

The public is turning more bullish on gold the more expensive it becomes, but sentiment is still a long way from the giddy euphoric peaks of the last bubble. Back in 2011, gold ranked first in the Gallup poll, with 34% of respondents naming it the best long-term investment.

By that stage it was already in the late stages of a bubble, and it then fell by nearly 50% over the next few years. Fortunately, MarketWatch readers got out right at the peak because we know when the party’s over.

Other data confirm that sentiment on gold isn’t at peak levels. The number of shares outstanding in America’s most popular gold exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Shares GLD, is still about 25% below where it was as recently as 2021.