Writes Brian Dunaway:

Lew,

I was just reading Robert Mish’s comments on gold, and I appreciated the very clever analogy (and play on words) of manipulating the monetary system as “sandbagging the riverbanks knowing the flood would be even more disastrous when the bank broke.”

I’ve been looking at gold and silver prices (and more lately, crypto) almost daily for over 40 years, but it has been quite some time since I looked at it with some time perspective. I was actually somewhat surprised at what I saw, and what I calculated. The trend of the last six years is “impressive,” with price increases picking up even more steam recently. Based on yesterday’s close of $2626/oz., a bull market starting point set to 8 Oct 2018 ($1184/oz.) yields a 121.8% increase over almost six years (14.3% annualized), set to 28 Sep 2022 ($1657/oz.) yields a 58.5% increase over almost two years (26.2% annualized), and set to 3 Oct 2023 ($1824/oz.) yields a 44.0% increase over almost one year (45.9% annualized).