Gold has recently been setting all time highs on a nominal basis and has broken the $2,000 an ounce barrier. It had been eight years since a new high had been set, and this is obviously an important event.
However, when compared to the magnitude of gold gains over a secular cycle, the recent price movements have been quite small in comparison to what history shows us could be on the way. To see why this is the case, we need to move from measuring the consistency of the price advantage that gold builds over stocks in a secular cycle, to the cumulative magnitude of the relative gains.
As we will explore, for two investors starting with equal assets, the historical norm is for an investor in the correct asset to have 2 times to 5 times the net worth of an investor in the wrong asset, within 3-5 years of a new secular cycle starting. This extraordinary degree of wealth creation/destruction is so large that it may seem improbable – but it is just what history shows us, and a swing in wealth of this magnitude occurred in all four of the secular cycles studied herein.
