Olympic gold medals haven’t been actual gold for over a century. The last solid, 24-karat gold medal to be awarded was at the 1912 Games in Stockholm, according to the International Olympic Committee.

Since then, they’ve been mostly made up of silver — with six grams of thin gold plating on the outside.

But especially as the prices of gold and other metals have jumped recently, those six grams make a big difference.

As of Feb. 6, gold was trading at $4,889 an ounce — up 70 percent from its price a year ago. It’s about double what it was worth during the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Silver was trading at $77 an ounce — up 138 percent from a year ago, and almost triple what it was worth during the 2024 Olympics.

The values of gold and silver have soared over the last year — silver rose 60 percent in January 2026 alone — as investors seek safe places to park their money during heightened geopolitical turmoil and worries about inflation.

Olympic athletes don’t compete to resell their medals, and most are in the Games for the prestige the medals represent.

The movements in the precious metal markets in the run-up to this year’s Games in Italy, however, have drawn new attention to the real value of the athletes’ accomplishment.

Even with volatility in recent days — both metals plunged in value last week, as analysts speculated that the prices had become overvalued — gold and silver medals are worth well over twice what they were worth at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Tesla, the 23-year-old company that brought green cars into the mainstream, has been pushed off its perch as the world’s top electric vehicle seller.

Chinese EV manufacturer BYD sold hundreds of thousands more cars last year, and it’s not just in China.

In most of the countries where the Chinese titan went head-to-head with Tesla — including Germany, Mexico, Thailand and Australia — Tesla lost market share at an unprecedented rate.

The end of federal support for EVs has bitten into Tesla’s sales in the U.S., while backlash against Chief Executive Elon Musk’s political posturing has damaged his company’s reputation both at home and abroad. Globally, BYD is dominating with newer models, better batteries and lower sticker prices.

“Tesla didn’t just lose its sales crown, it squandered its position as a leader,” said Paul Blokland, co-founder of automotive data company Segment Y Automotive Intelligence. “As the U.S. industry retreats behind a wall of tariffs and abandoned EV plans, Asia has taken the torch.”

In one of the most extreme examples of Tesla getting trumped, BYD vehicles swarmed roads in Europe last year. The Chinese company’s sales in the top 10 European markets quadrupled in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to calculations from Segment Y. Tesla sales slumped 30% over the same period.

As Tesla loses global market share, Musk has been trying to diversify Tesla away from its EV roots and rebrand it as more of an AI, robotics and robotaxi company.

On Tesla’s earnings call last month, Musk announced he would end production of the Model S and Model X and use the freed-up factory space to produce Optimus humanoid robots. He said he hopes to produce 1 million robots a year at the production plant in Fremont.

“It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end with an honorable discharge because we’re really moving into a future that is based on autonomy,” Musk said on the call.

BYD was founded in 1995 in Shenzhen, China, starting out as a maker of low-cost rechargeable batteries for consumer electronics, eventually supplying Motorola, Nokia and others.

BYD has now emerged as a global electric-vehicle heavyweight by controlling much of its supply chain and rapidly rolling out new models. An early investment from Berkshire Hathaway helped legitimize the company abroad. As BYD expanded sales across China, Europe and other overseas markets, it has been reshaping competition in the auto industry everywhere it lands.

Due to steep tariffs and federal restrictions, you can’t buy a BYD passenger vehicle in the U.S. But according to experts and customers, BYD offers a higher-quality car for a much lower price in other countries. The BYD Dolphin, an all-electric hatchback, starts at less than $14,000 in China.

Experts said BYD has several advantages over Tesla, including a more diverse product offering, lower-cost access to rare-earth metals used in batteries, and no safety and labor laws like those in the U.S.

“High visibility elements of BYD cars seem to be superior to not just Teslas but a lot of the cars that are being produced by non-Chinese companies,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at iSeeCars.com. “Musk has got to find another concept to build his legacy on.”

Tesla offers a few main vehicles with some variation, including a compact car, a midsize SUV and the Cybertruck. BYD sells more than eight models that include sedans, several SUVs, minivans and trucks.

In countries where there is a choice between Tesla and BYD, customers say BYD cars look better, cost less and come with more options.

Amy de Groot, a resident of Melbourne, bought her BYD Sealion 6 about a year ago for around 55,000 Australian dollars. She said BYD vehicles are all over the roads in her community.

“Everyone that gets into the car is dead shocked at how nice it is,” De Groot said. “It’s a beautiful car to look at and to be inside.”

When she was shopping for an electric vehicle, De Groot didn’t give much thought to buying a Tesla. Teslas peaked in popularity in Australia about five years ago, she estimated, but Musk’s reputation has significantly deteriorated since then, she said.

“At the time that I was looking, the Tesla stocks bombed really hard, and resale is always top of mind for me,” De Groot said. “It was a real fad to have a Tesla, and I just don’t think that they’re competitive in any way.”

According to Segment Y Automotive Intelligence, BYD sold more than 52,000 electric vehicles in Australia in 2025, a 156% increase from the year prior. Tesla sales in the country fell 24%.

Even in California, where electric vehicles are extremely popular and BYD is nowhere to be found, Tesla is losing market share.

The number of new Teslas registered in California fell more than 11% from 2024 to 2025. Tesla’s market share among EVs in the state fell 5 percentage points over the same period, according to recent data from the California Auto Outlook. American automaker Chevrolet and Honda, a Japanese manufacturer, both gained market share at the same time.

“The scrapping of incentives no doubt impacted Tesla, but at least it does not have to worry about BYD in its own backyard yet,” Blokland said.

One of BYD’s competitive edges, analysts say, is its batteries. It started as a battery company and has developed batteries that are more affordable and powerful than those made by the competition.

Another factor is that battery materials are cheaper to source in China, said Brauer with iSeeCars.com.

“When the most expensive part of an electric car is the battery, and you have a massive advantage on the cost of producing a battery, you have a massive advantage in the EV world,” he said.

BYD may also be getting some help from government backing as well as lower labor costs, experts say.

“Our rules and environmental regulations and our laws about how you treat workers are not globally instituted,” said Brian Moody, an automotive expert and analyst. “It seems to give BYD a financial advantage in that they can charge next to nothing for a car that maybe costs more than that to build.”

While BYD vehicles are not expected to land in the U.S. anytime soon due to trade and safety restrictions, they are increasingly going to be found just across the border.

More than 75,000 BYDs were sold in Mexico last year, according to Segment Y’s tally. Meanwhile, Canada recently reached a trade agreement with China that would allow more Chinese EVs into the country.

Round numbers always enchant humans, especially when they’re big round numbers.

So you’ll probably be reading and hearing a lot about how the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 50,000-point threshold Friday for the first time.

Actually, “threshold” isn’t the right word. The mark’s significance is psychological, if that.

In real terms, nothing got triggered at that moment, which happened at about 2:27 p.m. Eastern time. No rules or regulations changed. In and of itself, it won’t create a jump-up in anyone’s personal net worth.

It’s doubtful that any trading algorithms kicked in, except those that might have been keyed to a sharp reversal of trading sentiment from earlier in the week, when it was pretty sour.

Still, the chances are that attention will be paid. The Dow gained 1,206.95 points or 2.47% Friday, closing at 50,115.67.

If you’re inclined to make a bet, you might put your money on the likelihood that President Trump or his minions will take this to mean the overall economy is firing on all cylinders, thanks to his policies. It doesn’t mean that.

So let’s dig a little deeper into the meaning of this particular round number. We can start by noting that the Dow not only doesn’t rank as a reliable picture of the U.S. economy, it doesn’t rank as a picture of the stock market as a whole. It’s a price-weighted average of only 30 stocks, with higher priced stocks having a bigger influence on the average, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index tracks, well, 500, and the Nasdaq Composite more than 3,000. (Both those indices moved sharply higher Friday, too.)

Yet I confess I have a soft spot for the Dow. That dates from the 1980s, when it was treated as more of an economic bellwether than now, and I was the New York financial correspondent for The Times.

The Dow had been running up fairly smartly, and I pleaded with the business editor, the revered Paul Steiger, to rescind the rule mandating that I write a story on any day when the average moved 20 points or more. However, I got his agreement that the day it broke 2,000 points for the first time, I would write that story.

And I did! That day was Jan. 8, 1987.

“It’s a milestone because round numbers intrigue everyone,” Newton Zinder, chief market analyst for E.F. Hutton & Co., told me at the time.

William LeFevre, market strategist for the Hartford-based investment firm of Advest, added: “This will bring a lot of little investors into the market, because the publicity associated with it focuses a lot of attention on the Dow.”

But as I observed then, hullabaloo over “milestone” numbers is typically misplaced. The Dow’s first close over 1,000 was greeted with great fanfare on Nov. 14, 1972, when investors and Wall Street professionals read it as a sign that explosive economic growth lay in store for 1973.

Market analysts were nearly unanimous in forecasting that the Dow could rise an additional 150 to 300 points within two years.

Sadly, no. It took nearly 10 years, or until October, 1982, for the Dow to reach even 1,100.

Any optimism the 2,000-point mark inspired also proved to be misplaced. The Dow suffered a major crash of 508 points on Oct. 19, 1987, only nine months later.

Comparing the trajectories of the U.S. economy and the stock market over the four decades since Dow 2,000 is an interesting exercise. In the first quarter of 1987, U.S. gross domestic product was $4.72 trillion, or $13.77 trillion in today’s dollars.

Today it’s $31.1 trillion. So the U.S. economy has grown by 558% in nominal terms, or 125% adjusted for inflation.

In that same period, the Dow Industrial average has grown by 2,400% in real terms, or an inflation-adjusted 758%. The S&P 500 has grown by 2,588% in nominal terms, or an inflation-adjusted 821%.

Dissertations can be written about what these comparative numbers say about, first, the long-term strength of the U.S. economy and, second, whether its majestic growth in wealth is distributed fairly. But they certainly document that corporate and capital valuations have handily outstripped economic growth generally. The bottom line is that few American households feel as if their wealth has grown by 2,400% in the last 39 years, or even 758%.

As for whether it’s possible to read conclusions about the economy in the Dow Industrial figures, it’s hard to discern a clear pattern. For one thing, the 30 components change over time, as the average’s owner, a joint venture between Standard & Poor’s, and the financial services company CME Group.

There’s a bit of gamesmanship involved in these decisions — the most recent change, in November 2024, substituted chipmaker Nvidia for chipmaker Intel. The change kept the average consonant with the evolution of the semiconductor market; Intel shares had lost half their value in 2024, while Nvidia had more than doubled, riding the wave of its dominance over the AI chip market.

Nvidia validated the average-makers’ instincts: Its gain of 7.78% Friday powered much of the average’s advance. Big percentage gainers included Caterpillar (up 7.06%), Goldman Sachs (4.31%), JPMorgan Chase (3.95%) and Walmart (3.34%).

Somewhere in there may lie truths about the semiconductor, banking, retail and manufacturing sectors, but one day’s results probably don’t tell the whole story. Nvidia’s gain came on the heels of a nasty week — the stock had lost 10% of its value since Jan. 29.

History tells us that its unwise to take solid conclusions from short-term action in the Dow or any other index. Friday’s gains could mark a lasting recovery from the market meltdown of recent weeks, or could be what market followers call a “dead-cat bounce,” and the cat is still dead.

For the moment, still, the Dow had a very nice day. That doesn’t mean the euphoria will last.