Gold recently crossed the $3,000 mark for the first time. One reason that’s notable — it’s a sign of economic anxiety. 

Investors are unnerved over a renewed trade war and the prospects of a recession, and so they are seeking shelter from the storm. For some, gold is that shelter.

Gold doesn’t pay dividends. You can’t spend it at the grocery store. 

But it’s considered a safer place to park your money when other investments in, say, the U.S. stock market, look like they’re going south. 

“People are seeing a lot of commercials that are running. ‘Gold is at all time highs, buy gold.’ There’s sort of a mania,” said Lee Baker, president of Claris Financial Advisors in Atlanta. He has been fielding lots of client calls on this topic.

“You know, it feels like everything is falling down around us. Let’s go to something that’s tangible. It’s there,” said Baker. 

For these clients, gold just feels more real than stocks and bonds. 

It’s not just anxious investors running up the price. Central banks are stocking up, too, in hopes the investment will endure this moment of economic uncertainty. 

“Gold has this very long track record of holding its value” over very long periods of time, said Campbell Harvey, a professor of finance at Duke. Millenia, even. 

“For most investors, their horizon is more like five to ten years,” said Harvey. 

And over those shorter time periods, the value of gold can be volatile, just like any other commodity. 

Paolo Pasquariello, professor of finance at the University of Michigan, said gold is among several safe havens people flock to in times of turmoil. One of them is the U.S. Treasuries. But right now, he said they’re less appealing to some investors. 

“Whether the money that you lend to the U.S. government is going to be returned,” he said. “All of these things that are typically assumed as granted are not anymore.” 

So, Pasquariello said, some investors who would typically be flocking to U.S. bonds are buying up gold bars instead.