Is gold rush over?

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The price of gold, which has climbed for years like a blood-pressure reading for anxious investors, plunged Wednesday to its lowest level in three months.

Gold fell almost $58 to $1,612 per ounce. It has declined 15 percent since September, when it hit a peak of $1,907. It had more than doubled from the financial crisis three years earlier.

The decline Wednesday came on an ugly day in the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 125 points — a day that last year probably would have caused fearful investors to buy gold as a protective investment.

“It’s difficult to forecast, but I think the gold bull market is over,” said Cetin Ciner, a professor of finance at the University of North Carolina- Wilmington. He likened the surge in gold to dot-com stocks before they collapsed.

Some investors buy gold as a hedge against inflation, and minutes from a Federal Reserve meeting that came out Tuesday afternoon suggested that the central bank believes inflation is under control.

Gold’s attraction as an asset of refuge during crises also seems to have diminished. The economy has picked up, and worst-case scenarios in the United States and Europe have faded.

“Fear has been gold’s best friend, and so, to the extent that fear is dissipating, gold should fall,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. “We might look back at these Fed minutes as the line in the sand.”