New Record: Gold Nears $1,900 an Ounce

What's one of the year's "best-performing" assets? If you guessed gold, you're right.

The precious medal rose again in worldwide trading on Monday morning, hitting prices that are flirting with $1,900 an ounce.

"Gold prices rallied towards $1,900 an ounce on Monday as concerns over the global economic outlook fuelled interest in the precious metal as a haven from risk and due to talk that weak U.S. growth could spark a further round of monetary easing," CNBC reports.

"Spot gold rose as high as $1,894.10 an ounce and was up 1.1 percent at $1,878.59 an ounce, building on its strongest one-week rise since February 2009 last week."

That's a new record, says Yahoo! Finance.

CNBC called gold one the year's "best-performing" assets considering it has risen 33 percent.

Why the increase? There's rampant speculation that the Fed could intervene in the markets with more stimulus measures. Those measures could easily inflate the money supply, making gold a safe haven.

"There has been a heavy round of speculation that the Fed could be pushed (into another round of) quantitative easing sooner than thought, as there haven't been any signals of a possible economic recovery," Pradeep Unni, senior analyst at Richcomm Global Services in Dubai, told CNBC.

Meanwhile, Business Insider reports oil has been flat as speculation grows thatproduction could increase amid a falling Gadhafi regime in Libya.