Gold is “a way of going long on fear,” Warren Buffett said in a 2011 appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He added that if people become more afraid, you make money, and if they become less afraid, you lose money, because “the gold itself doesn’t produce anything." In his 2011 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, he described gold as having “two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative.” Investopedia reminded readers of that language again in December 2025, pointing out that B ...