Gold’s biggest rally since the 1970s is being stoked by “gold-plated Fomo”, as investors fear­ful of miss­ing out on returns and wor­ried about infla­tion add the pre­cious metal to their port­fo­lios.

The bul­lion price has rock­eted nearly 50 per cent this year to a record of more than $3,800 per troy ounce after US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s trade war sparked a rush to haven assets and sent the dol­lar tum­bling.

But even when tar­iff-induced volat­il­ity in fin­an­cial mar­kets receded over the sum­mer, the gold price accel­er­ated, with a near-12 per cent jump in Septem­ber alone mark­ing the biggest monthly gain since 2011.

A cru­cial cata­lyst, said asset man­agers, was the wider range of investors jump­ing on the band­wagon of soar­ing prices after years of record buy­ing by cent­ral bank reserve man­agers.

“It’s gold-plated Fomo,” said Luca Paol­ini, chief strategist at Pic­tet Asset Man­age­ment, refer­ring to a “fear of miss­ing out” that has helped stoke huge gains in mega­cap tech­no­logy stocks and other mar­kets such as credit. “Gold has become so big . . . that you can­not ignore it. There becomes a level when it becomes impossible not to own it.”