Gold is at a record high. Mortgage rates are at a record low. And investors are fleeing the stock market.

Welcome to the new economy.

With Wall Street turning into a wild roller-coaster ride, investors have been seeking safer venues to park their money.

The flight to safety hasn’t been more evident than at The Gold Guys outlet at Ward Centre, where the soaring price of the commodity has spurred people to cash in on their unwanted jewelry.

"This is exactly why we got in the business," said Joe Beasy, who co-owns the Minneapolis-based company with Shane Maguire. "We knew this was coming. It’s been absolutely crazy, and we expect it to go on for quite some time."

Gold settled at $1,822 an ounce Thursday, up $28.20, after hitting a record high of $1,829.70 earlier in the day. Gold prices have jumped 19 percent since the start of June and have more than doubled since the recession began in late 2007. Gold is considered a safe investment because its value doesn’t depend on the health of a single country’s economy.

Beasy said The Gold Guys’ business at Ward Centre has doubled in the past month, and the store had one day recently in which it converted almost $100,000 worth of gold to payouts. He said the company plans to open its second Hawaii store within the next 30 days at the Queen Kaahumanu Center on Maui, and with three other newly signed leases in Las Vegas, Dallas and Sacramento, Calif., will soon have 13 outlets.

"When you link mortgage rates to the action in gold, you’re seeing what this economic stimulus does," Beasy said. "They keep interest rates artificially low, and they’ve announced they’re going to do that for at least two more years. So what happens in times like that is people run to real money, which is gold, because they can’t print more gold."

He said women are cashing in when they twist a chain, lose an earring, sell a ring or when they want to get rid of "that bastard jewelry" after breaking up with a boyfriend.

"So it’s a store that does serve a purpose regardless of what the economy does," Beasy said.

Besides gold, investors also have been seeking safety in U.S. Treasurys despite Standard & Poor’s recent downgrade of the U.S. debt rating to AA+ from AAA. That has led to record-low mortgage rates since those rates are linked to the 10-year note.

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell last week to its lowest level on record dating to 1971, Freddie Mac said Thursday. It declined to 4.15 percent from 4.32 percent the previous week. The last time long-term rates were lower was in the 1950s when 30-year loans weren’t widely available and most long-term loans lasted 20 or 25 years. The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage fell to a record low for the third straight week at 3.36 percent.

"Oddly, both gold and Treasurys are perceived as safer havens than everything else in asset markets," said Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics. "My personal guess is that only one of those choices is really that safe, and that’s government securities. My concern about gold is that the minute things get good, the emperor has no clothes and there’s nothing really there except other people retreating to the safety of gold. People seem to believe that other people believe it will be worth more in the future."

Brewbaker said concern is growing that there might be a new recession and that investors are looking for a safe haven like U.S. Treasury securities.

"What’s happened the last two weeks is a combination of worsening sovereign debt management in the eurozone and the failure of the U.S. Congress to credibly commit to long-term deficit reduction," he said. "It’s so bad that people are still willing to buy U.S. Treasurys even after the downgrade."

Executives with two local mortgage companies are seeing a pickup in activity stemming from the low interest rates.

"Relative to the real estate side of things, activity has been very strong the first couple weeks of August," said Scott Higashi, executive vice president of sales for Prudential Locations LLC. "A lot of activity was stimulated when the (30-year) rate dropped earlier in the month. We’re watching very carefully how activity on Wall Street affects consumer confidence. Wall Street’s stock performance affects people’s retirement savings and just doesn’t feel good. So you have to have some thought that things are OK to be in the real estate market."

Anders Hostelley, executive vice president of loan production for Honolulu HomeLoans, said the company’s refinancing applications have tripled over the past month.

"Every time the rate drops an eighth of a point, it become feasible to refinance for another group of borrowers," he said.

Higashi said he sees the Oahu real estate market "being more or less on a plateau" for the rest of this year.

"It’s very stable," he said. "One of the reasons it’s a bit ho-hum is that the median sales price doesn’t move too much up or down. It’s single digits, and generally what we’ve seen in the last year and a half, it’s reasonable to say it will continue for the rest of this year."