Seven Charts That Put the Gold Bull Market in Context

“We have gold because we cannot trust government.”

– Herbert Hoover

March 31, 2025 — Remember that long, boring stretch where gold couldn’t break resistance at $2,000/oz?

Here it is in the context of this century’s bull market — note the definitive breakout in early 2024.

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What’s driving the bull market? Central bank buying. And what’s driving that? Geopolitics. Emerging market central banks started planning for a post-dollar world when the Ukraine war broke out:

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While the above was happening, the BRICS countries’ cumulative GDP surpassed that of the G-7 developed countries. As Incrementum notes:

For years, the BRICS+ countries have had a considerable trade and current account surplus with the West. A steadily increasing share of gold in the currency reserves of emerging economies is the manifestation of this development. This is similar to the situation after the Second World War, when Europe, especially Germany and France, successively increased their gold reserves as a result of high current account surpluses. In contrast, U.S. gold reserves fell to almost one quarter, or just over 8,000 tonnes, as a result of the gold drain. While the U.S. experienced a gold drain in the 1960s, there are currently signs of a gold gain in the emerging markets.

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Not surprisingly, China, with its persistent trade surplus, has been a leading buyer of gold.

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As they accumulate gold, foreign central banks are dumping U.S. dollar-denominated debt.

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China is also encouraging its citizens to own gold. The resulting strong domestic demand is driving gold prices to a premium on the Shanghai Gold Exchange. This, in turn, is increasing the flow of gold from West to East. From Incrementum:

The enormous Chinese appetite for gold can be seen in the premium for Chinese gold compared to LBMA prices. The high domestic demand in China is also being fueled by China’s youth, who have recently discovered gold beans as an investment opportunity. In addition, import restrictions or tariffs on gold imports could keep prices in China artificially high. Another reason is likely to be China’s withdrawal from the LBMA gold auctions last year, which may have restricted the volume of gold flowing into China.

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Western investment advisors have yet to recognize the above dynamic. In 2023, 71% of their clients have virtually no exposure to gold, and that number has barely risen since then.

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A Bull Market With Legs

The trends driving the gold bull market — de-dollarization, inflation, and a looming currency reset — accelerated in the past year and have much further to go. Combined with the apparent cluelessness of Western investors, the result should be higher gold demand and rising prices in the coming decade. Keep stacking!

Regards,
John Rubino, Grey Swan Investment Fraternity

P.S. from Addison: The gold trade still has room to go. Please review our research on the gold bull and our investment recommendations here.

“I have always enjoyed Addyson’s thoughts and commentary,” writes Joan. D “

The second Trump administration is rapidly realigning the U.S. position in global politics; new policies (tariffs!) and advancements in AI are rebooting the entire U.S. economy, and — every day – your investments and your money are reflecting those changes…

We’ll have plenty of chances to point out things that make you go “hmmm…” and add a snarky comment or two.

Any first impressions? Please add your ideas or suggestions right here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com

“We have gold because we cannot trust government.”

– Herbert Hoover

March 31, 2025 — Remember that long, boring stretch where gold couldn’t break resistance at $2,000/oz?

Here it is in the context of this century’s bull market — note the definitive breakout in early 2024.

Turn Your Images On

What’s driving the bull market? Central bank buying. And what’s driving that? Geopolitics. Emerging market central banks started planning for a post-dollar world when the Ukraine war broke out:

Turn Your Images On

While the above was happening, the BRICS countries’ cumulative GDP surpassed that of the G-7 developed countries. As Incrementum notes:

Turn Your Images On

Not surprisingly, China, with its persistent trade surplus, has been a leading buyer of gold.

Turn Your Images On

As they accumulate gold, foreign central banks are dumping U.S. dollar-denominated debt.

Turn Your Images On

Western investment advisors have yet to recognize the above dynamic. In 2023, 71% of their clients have virtually no exposure to gold, and that number has barely risen since then.

Turn Your Images On

A Bull Market With Legs

Regards,
John Rubino, Grey Swan Investment Fraternity

P.S. from Addison: The gold trade still has room to go. Please review our research on the gold bull and our investment recommendations here.

“I have always enjoyed Addyson’s thoughts and commentary,” writes Joan. D “

We’ll have plenty of chances to point out things that make you go “hmmm…” and add a snarky comment or two.

Any first impressions? Please add your ideas or suggestions right here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com

The narrative for BTC and other cryptocurrencies is that every government around the world has high debt-to-GDP ratios. It means they are going to print more currency. It means there is a need for alternative currency. In the past, this alternative currency was gold.

Gold is not very portable. It’s a good store of value. It’s not as great of a store of value as BTC in terms of actually storing it. BTC, you can store it on a hard drive or at Coinbase. Gold, if you have bars you have to keep them in a bank or you have to dig a hole in your backyard. And you can’t send gold around the world as easily as you can send BTC.

I still think this rally has legs. If you go back to where the breakout happened, we were really in November of 2024 that was the beginning of this bull market in my mind because that was the first time we hit an all-time high in a couple years. Then we rallied. We pulled back. We tested that level again.

The uptrend, in my mind and with what I’m seeing, is still intact. We’re just in an oversold condition right now.

Nvidia’s $900 billion round-trip this week wasn’t about some revelation in Jensen Huang’s chip factory. The business is firing on all cylinders – and may yet be one more reason for the market to soar higher into 2026.

The culprit was the macro — one gust of wind from the labor market and trillions in valuation shifted like sand dunes.

Nvidia’s earnings lifted the market at the open, but the jobs report’s undertow snapped sentiment like a dry twig. As we pointed out this morning, the S&P notched its biggest intraday reversal since April.

The first half of the move was classic Wall Street choreography: blowout earnings, analysts breathless with adjectives, and every fund manager terrified of underweighting the patron saint of AI.

In April, following the “Liberation Day” low, the indexes took off in the morning only to crash later in the day. The first and only other time in history we have seen a strong bullish opening followed by a sharp bearish close was during the 2020 recovery from the Covid shock.

In both cases, the markets were rebounding from exogenous shocks.

That’s not where we are today. The index-level charts may look composed, but underneath plenty of individual stocks are trading as if they’ve already slipped into a private bear market of their own.

We’ll see how the day unfolds. It’s options-expiration Friday — the monthly opex ritual when traders roll positions forward, unwind old bets, and generally yank prices around like terriers with a chew toy.

Every major tech shift has followed a similar pattern. As information moves faster, the money follows.

The telegraph made news global and opened up a world of investment opportunities. Radio, and then television, ignited a new wave of prosperity for investors. And the internet made communication instant, creating fortunes for those who saw what was coming.

Now standards like x402 are doing the same for AI and digital payments, potentially putting Jamie Dimon’s empire in jeopardy.

If you have Coinbase building the payment rails, Circle handling settlement and projects like Worldcoin and Particle Network solving for identity and wallets — do you really need a bank to validate transactions and keep track of who owns what?

All of these companies are helping to build a new layer of fintech infrastructure. And they’re all working toward an economy that runs continuously, without the need for corporate scaffolding.

The uptrend, in my mind and with what I’m seeing, is still intact. We’re just in an oversold condition right now.

The culprit was the macro — one gust of wind from the labor market and trillions in valuation shifted like sand dunes.

The first half of the move was classic Wall Street choreography: blowout earnings, analysts breathless with adjectives, and every fund manager terrified of underweighting the patron saint of AI.

In both cases, the markets were rebounding from exogenous shocks.

Every major tech shift has followed a similar pattern. As information moves faster, the money follows.

Now standards like x402 are doing the same for AI and digital payments, potentially putting Jamie Dimon’s empire in jeopardy.

All of these companies are helping to build a new layer of fintech infrastructure. And they’re all working toward an economy that runs continuously, without the need for corporate scaffolding.