Summary
- Gold reached a new nominal price high, echoing patterns from past bull markets like in 1979-1980, when gold doubled in just over 100 days after initial highs.
- Today's economic conditions—with brittle debt markets and fragile interest rates—suggest gold's bull market has much further to go compared to previous cycles.
- Central banks, particularly in emerging markets, are shifting heavily into gold and away from bonds, reinforcing gold's long-term bullish fundamentals.
- The current rise in gold prices signals major upcoming changes in the global monetary system, with the U.S. dollar's dominance weakening.
- Despite gold's rally, silver remains undervalued and poised for a major move, similar to its 10x price surge from 1978 to early 1980.
- A major U.S. debt crisis looms, with unfunded liabilities and rising national debt eventually forcing systemic changes and boosting bullion demand.
- Recent spot prices showed gold at $3,314/oz and silver at $33/oz, with the gold/silver ratio still historically high at 100, highlighting silver's relative undervaluation.
- Big financial institutions like JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank are forecasting much higher gold prices, with JP Morgan predicting $4,000/oz by 2026.
- Asian and emerging market demand for gold and silver ETFs is surging, particularly in China, India, and Korea, while Western markets lag behind.
- The current bullion bull market is global (unlike 1980's Western-centric rally) and is expected to outlast traditional financial assets as debt levels and fiat currency risks worsen.
Gold hit a new nominal price headline high week as we mentioned it very well could in last week's CNBC India interview.
But to start this week, we have to look back, so we can then look further ahead.
That footage was captured at the South African Mint on October 2, 1979.
A country that to date has produced about 1 in 4 oz of gold ever mined. The clip ends with then 1979 Gold Krugerrand coin production, still the most iconic bullion coin name in the world. It started in 1967 and they never put fake low legal tender numeric values on them.
They are on sale and are still a great gold bullion product option.
The London AM fix for gold that day of filming was $437 oz.
Basically about 12.5 times the price gold had been for decades until the then London Gold Pool price rig fell apart some 12 years prior in 1968.
One might have thought after the gold price comedown that followed, falling back below four hundred to $380, well perhaps the bull had run its course.
No, the sold spot price basically doubled 110 days after this footage was taken, peaking at over $850 oz on Jan 21, 1980.
It literally took the COMEX shutting down new silver future longs into a liquidation order only forced price crash, and then public scapegoating of the Hunt Brothers for years to follow, all to bring order back into the collapsing US dominated fiat US dollar system at the time.
Interest rates in October 1979 right as gold was about to again double in short order would peak at 16% but then have to be raised near 20% in the proceeding two years 1980 and 1981 respectively.
Today in 2025, our brittle system can barely handle interest rates at 5% given record debt levels and weakening demand to hold our ballooning debt bags.
Emerging market central banks continue to move in the bullion over bonds in real time, often to the tune of 25% balance sheet allocations which will of course grow in percentage terms as spot price climb longer term to come.
Our next major reserve currency rival, the fiat Euro is now apparently feeling itself and its coming further growth in multi-lateral world market share.
And of course the rising gold price is signaling this current unipolar fiat US dollar dominated reserve currency system is headed for structural change. And this week the current US Treasury head admit that big structural changes are afoot.
Have a listen to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lecturing the IMF and World Bank with marching orders this week.
We still far off from where gold is headed, and of course laggard silver, remains poised for its eventual time to outshine as usual later in a bullion bull. It literally 10 folded in price from the start of 1978 into the first month of 1980, so stay short silver at your own peril.
We still have $100s of trillions in both ever increasing US hard debt levels heading to $37 trillion soon, and Medicare Medicaid Social Security all the political 3rd rail unfunded liabilities to deal with perhaps next decade in some inevitable debt and store of value crisis that forces social contract changes in the Western World.
In real terms gold terms versus we still have a long way to go.
Back at the peak of gold in January 1980, for months the then gold price could buy between 1 to 2 shares of the then Dow.
The large corporate cherry picked Dow Jones Industrial Average closed just over 40,000 nominally today.
You can do the simple arithmetic for a future rhyme in time for where gold has to go to repeat a 1980 peak move.
Stick around, after this short break we'll do a run through of interesting stories, data, polls, and charts from this week.
And try and deduce where leader gold will be going in the near and even medium term to come.
The spot silver and were a bit mixed this week with gold taking the lead to begin and silver to strengthen nearer the close of the week.
The spot silver price finished above $33 oz bid and the spot gold price closed at $3,314 oz bid.
The spot gold silver ratio fell on silver's relative strength to finish the week at a still historically high level of 100.
At this point I am simply rage buying silver bullion, and this weekends sales at SD Bullion on quality silver sovereign coins could help you partake adding to your stacks.
Even silver establishment industry spokesmen like Philip Newman of Metals Focus is banging the table that a triple digit spot gold divided by spot silver ratio is unsustainable.
In that same article the Silver Institute was quoted citing another large demand outstripping silver supply deficit for last year of over 117 million oz.
On the gold price action side I tried warning potential FOMO'rs best I could that the gold price was getting historically high versus it's ongoing 200 day moving average. A sign that an interim top was likely coming.
Of course, so long as you didn't YOLO buy you all your gold bullion all at once, and even if you did physically at least. Don't beat yourself up, gold will also eventually be deemed cheap at $3,500 oz over the long term.
I ran a poll this week on where 160 respondents see the coming bottom for gold as it digest recent record nominal price high gains. The answers were mixed from likely too bullish to too bearish, but pretty well split across the various moving averages cited here.
JP Morgan made the round this week, banging the table for $4000 oz gold by Q2 2026 and potentially higher even by the end of this year in potential tail risk scenarios.
The behemoth zombie commercial bank even threw silver a bullish bone by stating it is likely headed towards $39 oz by the end of this year 2025. Thanks RICO suave.
Vince Lanci of the GoldFix substack also highlighted this week that the European zombie Deutsche Bank cited that $3200 oz gold might be the floor given the continued strong demand from central banks, Asian nations, and Chinese gold ETF inflows of late.
You can see what they mean by this chart of Chinese Gold ETF inflows this month, multi-folding the last record inflows from October of 2024 by a factor of about four times the old high this month April 2025.
Then take a cold hard look at how hard China has been both mining and buying gold since the 2008 GFC, and you'll see this trend is not stopping, only broadening.
Asian gold ETF inflows vs the Americas illustrates this point well, with a factor of about 5 times potential gold buying capital running into gold proxies in Asia vs the Americas this year 2025.
A similar phenomenon has been happening with silver investor inflows over in India with their current 14 unsecured silver ETFs sucking up about 1/2 of last year's silver investment demand.
In terms of overall Indian ETF market share gold and silver ETFs are still relatively tiny but they are growing. Currently gold has about four to one the amount of funds versus silver all while the silly spot GSR is an eye-watering 100 this weekend. Real sustainable clown world stuff indeed.
Korea continues to have ridiculous demand for gold investing and trading. I took to Twitter to remind Mr. Won and Korea that even if gold simply paused and stayed where it is at the moment (not gonna happen) that silver would have to double from where it currently is at simply to match what gold has done since breaking out in Covid 2020.
Speaking on behalf of both silver and gold, I keep seeing this crypto currency clown world chart being passed around by deluded Bitcoin bros where it literally uses all time mined US Geological survey data to cite "notional market" caps for both gold and silver.
Well, about half that gold is in jewerly and art forms, and yes some of that will likely get remelted into bullion form in the coming bullion mania phase, but perhaps there is like $12 trillion in gold bullion and private gold held coinage based on ongoing data records.
As for silver the chart claims there is $1.732 trillion in silver based on all time mined data. Flat out ignoring that most silver ever mined has been lost in trace amounts to landfills especially over the last 60 years running where silver prices were so depressed it wasn't economical to recycle so much of it.
Fine silver bullion and 90% coinage hoards might total 10 billion oz if we're lucky today, so like 1/5th of this ridiculous market cap claimed by the belligerent BTC bro echo chambers.
And still even in clown world today, silver and gold still have the best brand and outright physical private ownership profile going. I unfollow anyone sharing that nonsense, knowing they do next to no research of competing asset classes before posting such charlatanic inaccuracies.
And to close this week, we have many elder traders who often have 1980 glasses on when they warn of imminent potentials for gold to collapse in price.
The last gold bullion bull in 1980 was a Western only game. This time its global and central banks are ducking out of bonds and eventually stock market holdings further as gold accounts for the silly amounts of fiat currencies sloshing around the world at the moment.
I still maintain we're in the destruction phase, and in a winter cycle bullion wins out over other risk laden proxies even the miners as it has been consistently doing so for about 15 of the last 18 years running.
I like to take the longest views possible remembering past human follys and compare them to our own ongoing versions.
So while gold leads for now doing most of the blocking, inevitably infinite QE will return and recession fears will gave way to an outperforming silver valuation relatively speaking for some time.
Here is 760 years of empires sheering their people who weren't smart enough to get and own bullion ahead of time.
If you somehow don't think history doesn't rhyme in time, and technology doesn't need precious metals, bridges to massive losses in real terms can be found in the collective bond markets, and US stonk market. Continue down those roads if you must.
I will stay irresponsibly long bullion knowing the mass trillion in down wind fundamentals will eventually mania phase us higher to come.
That will be all for this week's SD Bullion Market Update.
And as always, take great care of yourselves and those you love.
