| Chart of the Day |
| OCTOBER 25, 2026 |
MONEY & MARKETS • GOLD |
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| An Ounce of Gold Cost $36 in 1970. Today It’s $4,000. |
| The “barbarous relic” Wall Street mocked 25 years ago just had the best quarter-century run of any major asset on the planet. |
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| Annual average gold price per troy ounce in USD. K = thousands. 2026 figure is the spot price as of October 24. |
| Source: World Gold Council, 2026 |
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| In the year 2001, you could buy an ounce of gold for $271. Wall Street laughed at the stuff. Stocks were the future. Gold was a pet rock for pessimists. |
| That $271 ounce is now worth roughly $4,000. If you had put $10,000 in gold at that 2001 low, you’d be sitting on roughly $148,000 today. The S&P 500 over the same stretch, dividends reinvested? About $108,000. Gold didn’t just win... it outpaced the stock market by close to 40%. |
| Now, most people look at a chart like this and think the move is over. It’s too high. I missed it. And here’s what they get wrong. The biggest buyers of gold right now are not retail investors or hedge funds. They’re central banks. The world’s governments bought gold at a 55-year record pace in 2022, and a record 45% of central banks surveyed say they plan to keep adding in 2026. They’re not buying because gold is trendy. They’re buying because they see what’s coming. |
| What’s coming is more of what got us here. Oil nearing $120 a barrel with the Strait of Hormuz still a flashpoint. A Fed meeting on Tuesday that will probably hold rates right where they are. And a national debt generating $1.2 trillion a year in interest payments. Every one of those conditions is the exact environment where gold thrives. |
| Look at the chart again. The bar for the year 2000 is barely visible. That tiny stub was the moment everyone gave up on gold. The bar on the far right is what happened to the people who didn’t. |
