'Sell America' has sparked a FOMO-fueled rush to gold and silver among everyday investors

• Retail investors are piling into gold and silver amid the blistering rally in metal markets.
• The precious metals were among the best-performing assets in 2025.
• "Sell America" and a burning sense of FOMO are motivating investors, industry experts say.

Jeremy Cerza, a 45-year-old retail investor, admits he isn't that experienced in markets, but even he knows metals stole the show in 2025.

Gold and silver were among the best-performing investments last year— and should the S&P 500 drop more than 1% for five days in a row, Cerza says he's jumping into the rally, with a plan to yank money out of the US stocks and plough around $20,000 into precious metals.

While he's concerned about a bubble, his faith in the Trump administration and the US economy is shaky enough that he thinks the risk will be worth the reward. He said if Trump keeps up his aggressive rhetoric on Greenland, he'd likely pull money from domestic markets.

"There's too much volatility in US markets currently, in my opinion," Cerza added.

A lot of investors felt that way in 2025, with more people squirreling away money into gold and silver as concerns about inflation, tariffs, and the strength of the US economy dominated the conversation and talk of "Sell America" took off.

That only picked up steam in the second half of the year, with more investors jumping into metals as prices went parabolic. The result? A FOMO-driven, meme-like rally that's taken many investors by surprise — and is leaving some worried that the flight to safety may itself be a bubble.

It's hard to look at charts of gold and silver and not see the outline of a market mania. Gold finished last year with its best run since 1979, and has soared 73% since the start of 2025.

That doesn't hold a candle to silver's increase. The metal is up 194% since the beginning of 2025, also notching its best annual performance in decades.

On average, retail investors poured a net $15 million into gold and a net $7 million into silver investments each day last year, according to data from VandaTrack Research.

Chatter about gold and silver has also been strong online. SwaggyStocks, an analytics platform that tracks mentions of investments on r/WallStreetBets, found that the SPDR Gold Shares ETF was the third most talked-about investment on the subreddit last year. The iShares Silver Trust ETF was among the top 20 most-talked about investments, according to data it shared with Business Insider.

Bilaal Dhalech, one retail investor, said he began buying gold and silver during the pandemic, but has invested more aggressively in recent years to hedge against inflation and "excessive money printing."

Dhalech said he had around $10,000 in physical gold and silver and $11,000 invested in gold ETFs. His ETF holdings have gained 30%, according to screenshots of his brokerage account Business Insider reviewed.

"I was shocked to see a conservative investment like gold and silver explode. Almost like meme coins," Dhalech said of the rally in 2025. "It's scary to see this much enthusiasm."

Jesse Gaddis, a public relations professional who works with precious metals companies, said he had been tracking gold for years, back when Donald Trump talked about gold on an episode of The Apprentice.

He finally began purchasing metals during the pandemic, after his client, a CEO of a precious metals firm, encouraged him to do so. He told Business Insider he had around $20,000 in physical gold and silver and around $15,000 invested in gold and silver ETFs as of last week.

"I'll be thinking about The Apprentice episode where I was like, 'Damn, I could have had it at $400,'" he said of gold's price at the time. "That FOMO comes out."

When the investments rocketed higher in 2025, Gaddis says he wasn't surprised. He sees gold and silver as a form of "wealth preservation" and acknowledges that "Sell America" is one reason so many investors jumped into metals.

Bullion Exchanges, a gold and precious metals retailer based in New York, says interest in gold and silver has been so hot that the firm doubled its clientele in 2025.

At its Diamond District location in Manhattan, a line of 10 to 20 people consistently forms outside the doors at all hours of the day. Many of them are buying metals for the first time, Eric Gozenput, the CEO, told Business Insider.

"It's been the wild, wild West the last three months," Gozenput said, speculating the firm could have grown 200% were it not for the store's limited capacity and shortages of some metals, like silver.

Sell America and FOMO

The craze for metals comes in two flavors.

On the one hand, many investors seem to be influenced by prominent gold bugs, who have been more vocal about the virtues of owning metals as tariffs and inflation have become bigger threats, Gozenput said. He said he believes many clients have been learning about trends like the debasement trade, which says the US dollar and dollar-denominated investments will weaken as debts pile up and fiat currency is devalued.

On the other hand, the strength of the "Sell America" trade has drummed up FOMO, as metals enjoy a rally that would make many meme stocks blush.

"I would say it's a combination of both people have FOMO as well as realizing they're not properly insured with their financial future and investments if they have zero physical precious metals exposure," he said.

Jeffrey Christian, a commodities expert and the managing director at CPM Group, said he believed "Sell America" fueled most of gold's and silver's rally through the end of last summer.

Then, gold prices shot up last August as the Fed signaled it would continue lowering interest rates. At that point, he believes the speculative trade kicked into high gear.

"That started this, what you call FOMO," he said, noting that his clients who were more "traditional" metals investors began to pull back as prices rocketed higher.

Concern that the rally has run too far is growing.

Christian said he believed gold could drop as much as 9% and silver could drop as much as 31% if the hype wanes.

Dhalech said he didn't believe the metals would crash, though he wouldn't be surprised to see a 10% correction in gold and silver in the near term.

This past week, Gaddis sold around half of his silver and gold ETFs to take some profits. Business Insider verified his current holdings with screenshots of his brokerage account.

"It's a nice slow ride up, but it's a quick elevator down," he said of a potential correction, adding he knew it would be harder for him to get rid of his physical metals.