Back in 2009, the airwaves were flooded with buyback commercials—Cash4Gold running Superbowl ads, companies scrambling to acquire precious metals from consumers. Meanwhile, the real power players were on the other side: central banks. Russia, India, China—the heavyweight institutions were accumulating aggressively.

Fast forward to 2025, and the script flipped entirely. Now every ad pushing across your screen is about buying gold—retailers hawking bars and coins with increasing desperation. The institutional bid has evaporated. What's actually happening? The cycle has rotated. Today's retail buyers aren't smart money; they're exit liquidity. The composition of demand shifted from structural accumulation by central banks to speculative retail interest. That's not a bullish signal—that's a warning sign of where we are in the cycle.