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For obvious reasons, there are few questions asked as regularly of precious metals commentators as “how high do you think the price of gold and/or silver can rise?” Before I look at what is implied when people ask that question, I will discuss the answers to that question – and what is implied by these estimates.
The starting-point is to go back to when the bull market began for precious metals, at roughly the turn of the millenium. At that time, the small number of informed, precious metals commentators who occupied this niche were “estimating” that the price of gold could hit $1000/oz – with the more confident/bullish pundits suggesting that gold might even reach $2,000/oz.
Skip-ahead to today, and now any experienced precious metals commentator who estimates $2,000/oz as a “ceiling” for the price of gold is seen as being extremely conservative. Veteran precious metals commentator, Lorimer Wilson, recently surveyed these analysts, to compile a list of such estimates – in order to set some parameters for these prices.
He found five commentators currently suggesting that the price of gold could eventually exceed $10,000/oz, nearly two dozen who chose figures between $5,000 - $10,000/oz, and than another dozen who had specifically chosen $5,000/oz as their price target. He added more than two dozen other estimates of between $2,500 - $5,000/oz – and didn’t include (or couldn’t find) a significant number of informed commentators expecting anything less than that.
What happened between then and now? Were those earlier commentators simply not as aware or astute with respect to the potential of precious metals? Hardly. As a commentator who was not one of the first to become an advocate for precious metals, I have great admiration for the “first generation” of commentators who were here before myself.
Not only did they demonstrate superior insight in seeing what was happening before others, but they also demonstrated extraordinary courage and conviction in being ready to stand up and make their predictions for this sector – when it was literally the most-unloved asset-class among all Western investors.
What has changed since $2,000/oz was originally seen as a long-term maximum for the price of gold is that our currency-debauching bankers keep “moving the goal-posts”. Put another way, the bankers have accelerated the destruction of their cherished, paper currencies so rapidly that the earlier predictions were rendered obsolete.
In short, while the original “gold bugs” were seen as extremists and alarmists, in fact their only ‘sin’ was to underestimate the monetary depravity of bankers. Thus, we have established the proposition that rather than being shrill “Chicken Littles”, that precious metals commentators have been making sober, conservative appraisals of the economic harm caused by the extreme excesses of bankers – in the absence of a gold-standard.
Full article HERE
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