Gold is having its best year since 1979. Here’s why the price might keep hitting new highs.

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In April, our financial adviser did something new: He put my wife and me in gold.

I’d always dismissed gold as a fringe asset — something for investors who are 1) obsessed with inflation; 2) don’t trust paper money; 3) are convinced the world is about to fall apart, or 4) all of the above.

But I’m quite pleased our adviser made the move. It’s turned out to be the best year for the yellow metal since 1979.

The price of gold on the spot market closed Wednesday above $4,000 an ounce for the first time, bringing its gain for the year to 54 percent and nearly 150 percent since 2022.

Gold has outshined bitcoin, another don’t-trust-the-government asset, US stocks, and play-it-safe funds that mix stocks and bonds.

After such an extended run-up, it’s fair to ask whether the Great Gold Rush is nearing an end. The general consensus is no.

Goldman Sachs just raised its gold forecast to $4,900 an ounce for the end of next year. That would mark a gain of more than 21 percent from Wednesday’s $4,042 closing price.

“Even when adjusted for inflation, gold is at an all-time high,” Jack Ablin, chief investment strategist at Cresset Capital Management, said in an interview. “But it’s still not too late” to add gold to your portfolio.

No investment is a sure thing, but here are three reasons many experts think gold is a prudent play right now.

Insurance: Plenty of investors speculate in gold by betting on short-term price swings.

But the metal is mostly used as a hedge against inflation, a drop in the value of the US dollar, and financial or political turmoil. Right now, investors are anxious about all three.

As the impact of tariffs kicks in, forecasters see inflation remaining elevated at about 3 percent, one percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target.

• The dollar is on track for its worst year in five decades. Morgan Stanley blames the decline in part on slowing US economic growth, falling interest rates, and foreign investors reducing their exposure to the greenback.
• Tensions are running high over the federal shutdown, mounting government debt, and the Trump administration’s threats to Fed independence.

For these reasons, investors are starting to view gold as safer than the dollar, according to Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund manager.

“People are looking for ways to effectively de-dollarize, or de-risk their portfolios,” Griffin told a Bloomberg conference this week.

Silver is also on a run, mostly for the same reasons.

Diversification: Gold can add balance to a conventional portfolio heavy in stocks and bonds.

The metal often appreciates when equities fall or when fixed-income returns wane. Because gold is priced in US dollars, it often rises in value when the dollar weakens, since it takes more dollars to buy the same ounce of gold.

A weaker dollar also makes gold cheaper for buyers using stronger currencies, increasing global demand and driving prices up.

My adviser, Alex Burke of Financial Solutions Associates in Dedham, bought shares in April of an exchange traded fund that invests in gold. The price has appreciated 28 percent since.

The ETF is a small slice of our IRA — about 6 percent. Burke recommends being judicious.

“Don’t put all your eggs into one golden basket, use it as a small part of a well-diversified portfolio,” he said in an email. “Even if you are entering at the top, if you limit the allocation to a small part of a portfolio you will limit your potential losses, but still have plenty of upside if gold soars.”

Market trends: Gold prices have been on an upward slope since the Great Recession as central banks sought to diversify their reserves beyond the dollar and protect against financial shocks.

The buying accelerated after Western countries froze Russia’s foreign currency reserves as punishment for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. That triggered a flight to safety and concerns among some emerging market governments that their dollar holdings might not be so safe.

Analysts expect central banks to continue buying gold to reduce their exposure to the US. Falling interest rates, federal deficits, and fears of an AI stock bust will increase the metal’s appeal to investors.

Final thought: Gold supply increases only about 2 percent a year, so even a modest rise in demand can send prices sharply higher.

In June, JPMorgan Chase analysts forecast that gold would top $4,000 by the third quarter of 2026. It was off by almost a year.

Of course, financial markets reverse course all the time. Gold’s surge could lose steam due to an unexpected rise in interest rates, an easing of geopolitical tensions, or a rebound by the US dollar.

Gold isn’t always effective as a hedge.

Still, a modest allocation makes sense — not because gold is going to beat stocks or bonds over every stretch, but because its appeal as an inflation hedge and diversification tool, combined with strong demand, make it a reasonable insurance policy in tumultuous times.

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“Any government that asks universities to make that choice is utterly destructive.”

— L. Rafael Reif, MIT president emeritus, on the Trump administration’s ultimatum to nine top schools, including MIT, to support its political agenda or potentially lose access to research grants, student loans, federal contracts, visas for their students, and preferential tax treatment.

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Squeezed: Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is laying off about 40 workers, or nearly 16 percent of its staff, citing the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding and an upcoming increase to the endowment tax.

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Gaming the system: In an escalating cat-and-mouse game, job hunters are trying to fool AI into moving their applications to the top of the pile with embedded instructions.

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Makeover: Prominent local developer Tom O’Brien has been picked by the owner of the former Carney Hospital site to lay out a plan for the 12.7-acre Dorchester property.

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Attention shoppers: REI Co-op will shut its Boston store next year, one of several closures announced by the outdoor gear and clothing chain.

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Scooped up: Telecommunications giant Verizon agreed to buy Boston-based Starry, a pioneer in delivering wireless broadband service to homes.

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10,000

— The number of Dunkin’ locations in the US after the opening of a new store last week in Darien, Ill.

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I’ve got better odds of winning the lottery than receiving a “genius” award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Each year, the foundation selects a group of “extraordinarily” creative people to receive $800,000 over five years to fund their work.

Four New Englanders are among this year’s 22 recipients:

Lauren K. Williams, 47, a Harvard University mathematician whose research is in algebraic combinatorics and also contributed to solving problems in other areas through interdisciplinary collaborations.

Ieva Jusionyte, 41, a Brown University cultural anthropologist whose diverse ethnographies investigate the ethical and practical issues that national border policies create for workers and communities who live in border regions.

Jeremy Frey, 46, an Eddington, Maine, artist whose mastery of Wabanaki basket weaving both carries on traditional practices and finds new possibilities in the materials and techniques.

Margaret Wickens Pearce, 60, a Rockland, Maine, cartographer whose maps document the relationships of Indigenous people in North America to their land and that narrate histories, incorporate knowledge, and detail the ongoing dispossession of Native people.

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📆 On this date in 2009, President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

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Larry Edelman can be reached at larry.edelman@globe.com.