China's apparent trimming of US dollar holdings gives rise to speculation that money has shifted into the yellow metal
Over the centuries, gold has had many uses, from jewellery and medicine to the world's reserve currency.
But it is the yellow metal's renewed attraction as an investment that has people talking.
Often viewed as an acquired taste for cerebral investors or central banks, it is hard to ignore nowadays after a two-year bull charge, especially as each lurch downwards in the US dollar seems only to propel gold higher.
Now at an eight-year high and above the psychologically important US$400 level, few investors appear to be getting vertigo - it is, after all, still 50 per cent off its 1981 high.
In fact, its allure seems to be increasing as new gold products are introduced from as far away as London to Shanghai.