RE: RE: stack If you can't read a 100 year gold chart and realize that there has only been two major moves in gold in the last 100 years, you're the idiot.
You could have bought $433.00 gold in Aug 1976 and sold on the high of that run at $1820.00 in Sept of 1980... a run 4 years in the making.
The other major run was from $337.50 in Feb 2001 and took 10 years to get to $1,826.00 in Aug 2011.
So in 100 years of the gold market, you had two opportunities to make good on an investment that "costs" you money to maintain if you hold physical gold in your hand.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/map-history-dollar/
This chart shows the exchange rate between U.S. dollar and Canadian curency over the two major moves.
In Aug 1976, you would likely have bought gold with a bit of an advantage over the U.S. dollar likely around $1.01. and IF you sold at the high in Sept 1980 at somewhere close to .80/to the dollar for an additional profit of 20% on your investment... at the very best you could have made roughly $1,664.00/oz, almost 5 times your money, without including the cost of holding the gold for 4 years and the broker fees in the two transactions.
In the other major move, you would have bought gold at roughly .68 cents to the U.S. dollar that would have made the actiual cost of the gold at the time of purchase close to $445.50, and sold at just over par between the currencies to make the "real best possible gain" of $1,380.50 (over 10 years), not including broker fees and storage fees for said gold. If you paid $50.00/year on one ounce of gold over the ten years, that would reduce your real best possible gain to $885.50; which turns out to the a double... pretty much the same as any investment in a hand full of Bluechip stocks.
https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/price
HAD you have bought Apple stock in Feb 2001 @ $9.60/share ($12.68 CDN adjusted), and sold in Aug 2011 @ $373.62; you would have relized a gain of roughly $361.00/share OR almost 28.5 times your money and had you have had the fortitude and insight to hold it to the $700.00/share top, you would have been a happy man indeed!