By Lucy Raitano, Naomi Rovnick and Amanda Cooper LONDON (Reuters) -Investors are testing well-established views about gold, which is surging to new records, as an AI-driven stocks rally and red-hot bitcoin force a rethink of what's driving one of the world's oldest asset classes. Gold topped $4,000 an ounce for the first time this week and with a 53% gain in 2025, is heading for its best year since 1979, trouncing bitcoin's 30% rise and the 15% increase in the S&P 500 plus its array of tech titans. Typically, the metal thrives when investors fret over inflation, economic slowdown or potential market turmoil. Conversely, when investors' risk appetite improves, it tends to lag shinier alternatives that do not require extra cash to store or insure them. That dynamic was at play in 1980, when

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