Geopolitical impact on gold - anyone else feeling the squeeze?

• •Watching the news lately feels like a daily gut punch, especially with everything going on overseas.
• •I get the whole "flight to safety" narrative with gold, that's why we're in it.
• •And yeah, I've seen some decent bumps on those really bad news days.

Watching the news lately feels like a daily gut punch, especially with everything going on overseas. I’ve had most of my serious retirement cash (north of $400k now, mostly gold and some timberland trusts) in a Gold IRA for a while, and it's always been about generational wealth for us – looking at the long game, not quick flips. My grandfather started this whole thing with us after seeing how volatile regular markets could be, and honestly, it’s usually felt like a safe harbor. But these past few months, with the wars escalating here and there, the constant talk of inflation, and now election uncertainty hitting Europe, it’s got me second-guessing things I haven't really questioned for years.

I get the whole "flight to safety" narrative with gold, that's why we're in it. And yeah, I've seen some decent bumps on those really bad news days. But then you see these other factors, like central banks selling or even just comments from some random official, and it seems to negate any real gains. It sometimes feels like the geopolitical events are just noise, and the big players are manipulating the price regardless. Am I being too cynical here, or is anyone else feeling like the traditional "gold in uncertain times" rulebook is getting rewritten?

Specifically, I'm thinking about how much more chaos it seems to take now to move the needle significantly. Back maybe 5-10 years ago, a sniff of a conflict in a major region would send gold soaring. Now, it feels like we need actual, full-blown crises just to get a modest bump, and then it corrects almost immediately. Is this just because the global economy is so interconnected that other factors balance it out, or are we truly seeing a shift in how gold reacts to world events? Based out of Spokane, I'm pretty removed from urban financial centers, and maybe I'm missing some of the nuance. Would love to hear some other perspectives, especially from those of you who have been in precious metals longer than my 15 years.