Gold prices continued to decline Monday while stocks galloped to fresh record territory, stirring doubts about the precious metal’s massive rally.

Until a few weeks ago, gold looked unstoppable as it blew through record high after record high and at one point was up more than 60% for the year. But since peaking earlier this month, prices are down 9%, hovering around $4,000 per ounce.

Some on Wall Street tried to explain the surge in gold demand by citing the desire to shift away from dollar-denominated assets or by pointing to the so-called debasement trade, which assumes governments will let inflation run hot to ease their debt burdens and erode the value of bonds.

But Hamad Hussain, climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, had a more straightforward explanation in a not

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