The Gold Bull Market Is Back… Will It Last?

The gold bull is back. After trending downward for more than four years, gold prices have broken out to the upside with a gain of more than 20% off their December lows.

Gold’s crossing of the 20% threshold even caused the financial media to take notice. “Gold is now in a bull market,” reported CNNMoney (March 7, 2016).

Is the path now clear for the price of gold to march on toward new all-time highs? Perhaps.

But gold bulls can be temperamental and unpredictable. Sometimes they disappoint, as was the case with multiple short-lived bull markets in the 1980s and 1990s. Sometimes they keep running and running until they go parabolic.

So far all we’ve seen is a gold rally turn into an “official” bull market by virtue of prices advancing 20%. It’s an encouraging sign of strength; but it’s not in itself confirmation of a larger trend in force. A major bull market is characterized by a series of higher highs and higher lows over a period of months to years.

So far, gold has rallied around 22% from a low over a period of a few weeks. This rate of ascent isn’t sustainable in perpetuity. A healthy bull market ebbs and flows – it takes two steps forward and one step back, as It were.

That’s why a price correction after a 20%+ advance would be normal and healthy. If it’s a major bull market, then prices will go on to make a higher high, followed by a higher low.

Recall that the last big mania in gold took place from mid 1976 to January 1980. Prices surged more than 700% over that time period. Yet there were still corrections along the way – until the final, parabolic blow-off move. Another major gold bull market didn’t return until 2001-2011.

Yet from 1980 to 2001, there were multiple rallies of greater than 20%. For example, from April to September 1980, gold prices rallied more than 40%. But from there, they turned around to make lower lows.

In the summer of 1982, gold prices spiked 65% – from $300 to $500 an ounce. But by 1985 prices had fallen back below $300. The gold market hit rock bottom in 1999 at just above $250. Prices rallied 30% in the second half of 1999 before sliding back down to test those ultimate lows one last time in 2001.