Markets
Gold Is 24% Off Its January Peak — and Still Having One of Its Best Years Ever
Gold spiked to a spectacular high in late January before giving back a quarter of its value. Eight months later, it's still up massively year over year. Both facts are true at once, and both matter.
Gold's chart over the past year tells two true stories depending on where you draw the line. Measured from its parabolic late-January spike, the metal is down roughly a quarter from the high — a serious, multi-month pullback by any standard. Measured from a year ago, it's still up by an enormous margin, comfortably one of the strongest multi-year runs gold has put together in decades.
Both numbers describe the same asset accurately, which is exactly why headlines about gold have felt contradictory for months: "gold in correction" and "gold's historic bull run" are both defensible framings of the identical price chart, depending entirely on the reference point chosen. Neither framing is wrong. Neither is complete on its own.
The late-January spike itself is a useful case study in how a rally can outrun the trend supporting it. Gold had been climbing steadily on real structural demand — central bank buying, a weaker dollar, falling real yields — for months before the final leg turned sharply parabolic in the space of about two weeks, and gave back a large chunk of that final leg almost as fast as it appeared. The structural story didn't change that week. The pace of the move did, and pace is usually the first thing to snap back.
A pullback that unfolds over months rather than hours is a fundamentally different animal to trade than the spike that preceded it — a slower, trend-driven setup that fits Long Term's 48-hour horizon far better than trying to catch the exact bottom in a single session.