Episode Details

Bull markets don’t last forever. When you’re in the throes of one, it can feel like they do. But they don’t, and at a certain point you have to sell.

Gold bull markets can feel even more eternal. Not just because the metal itself is eternal, but because the story comes along that we are going back to a gold standard, or that the Great Purge, which many economists of the Austrian school say is inevitable after fifty years of fiat decadence, is finally upon us.

I get that argument. But it is too neat, too deterministic. Real life is much more mucky.

So today I want to consider a very important question, and I want to try and answer it honestly:

Where are we in this bull market?

Has gold already peaked? It’s possible. The spike to $5,600/oz at the end of January had many of the hallmarks of a blow-off top.

Or perhaps $5,600 was just a mid-cycle peak, such as we saw in 2006 or 1975-76 during previous bull markets.

Or is this bull market still in its infancy?

I’m going to study this bull market through every lens I can think of: price, time, valuation, participation, market structure, macro context and sentiment.

My bias going in is that we are mid-cycle, as I argued in my Great Forecast last week. Let’s see where I end up.

1. Duration

There have been two great gold bull markets since the end of the gold standard: 1971-1980 and 2001-2011. Both lasted nine to ten years.

When did this one begin?

It depends how you define it.

You could take the bear-market low of $1,045 in late 2015. You could take the $1,160 retest in 2018. You could take 2019, when gold broke out of its multi-year base.

Technical analysis is often in the eye of the beholder. Just like bull markets.

You could even argue late 2022, when the current acceleration began.

If you start in 2015, this bull market has already lasted ten years. That would put it right in line with the duration of previous cycles, and you could argue it is close to exhaustion.

If you start in 2018 or 2019, there may be several years left to run.

I favour 2018. Just as gold hit $250 in 1999, rallied, and then returned to roughly the same level in 2001 before the real bull market began, the 2018 low feels like the equivalent retest. Of course this is debatable.

And there is always the possibility that this bull market lasts longer than previous ones.

Verdict: mid- to late-cycle.

2. Relative valuation vs other assets

Oil

With gold at $5,200 and WTI crude around $87, it takes roughly 60 barrels of oil to buy one ounce of gold.

Historically this ratio ranges between 6 and 30.

The only time oil has been this cheap relative to gold was in the 2020 pandemic collapse, when oil went negative.

My view: it’s not so much that gold is expensive as that oil is cheap. Plus commodities inevitably get cheaper as we get better at producing them. (As long as you don’t measure the price in fiat).

Gold vs the S&P 500

With the S&P around 6,765, it takes about 1.3 ounces of gold to buy one unit of the index.

This ratio has been as high as 5 - at the peak of Dotcom in 2000, and the nadir of gold - and as low as 0.2 (during the depths of the 1930s and at the 1980 gold peak).

Gold is therefore on the expensive side relative to equities, but not at historic extremes.

This ratio could fall further if equities fall or gold rises.

Gold vs US housing

The US housing market varies enormously by region - Beverely Hills is not Detroit, Miami Beach is not McDowell County - so national averages should be treated cautiously. But they still give a rough guide.

We are now below the 2011 level and approaching