Well, the price of gold is up over $5,000 an ounce. And that means that many of the gold price predictions put forward by the big banks and the other Wall Street analysts have already been blown to bits, smashed to smitherines, and it's only January. So, if you want to know what a realistic price target is for gold for 2026, stick around. So if we want to understand where the price of gold is going, we have to look at supply and demand. But since the supply of gold is relatively stable at about 1 to 2% per year and because it


doesn't really respond to price, we can focus our analysis on demand. Now, there are three main pieces that affect demand for gold, at least in terms of monetary or investment purposes, and that is central bank gold buying, bars and coins, as well as ETFs. So, for this analysis, we're going to ignore jewelry, medallions, or even industrial demand for gold because those are relatively stable, a little bit cyclical, and they don't drive the price. Okay? So, let's focus on the three we talked about.


Starting with central bank gold purchases. You can see here that central banks have been net buyers of gold going back to 2010. And I'll remind you for anyone who has forgotten that for a couple decades, central banks were net sellers of gold. So that doesn't appear on the chart here, but they were net sellers of gold. And that largely drove the bare market of gold throughout the 80s and 90s. But here they've been net buyers. And you can see for 10 years on average, they bought about 500 tons. But


as of 2022, those purchases have approximately doubled, more than doubled, to over 1,000 tons. And that's on the heels of the West freezing Russia's reserves. So that basically sent the message to central banks all over the world that your foreign exchange reserves are not safe. They can be weaponized in a heartbeat, and you need to get an asset that does not have a counterparty risk and that does not have control over another entity. We can also see here demand for gold bars and coins. And it's not that interesting of


a chart. We don't see a whole lot of variation. And it almost looks like demand is falling. I mean, it is since 2013, but this will become interesting when we put all three pieces together on the same chart. So, let's move to ETFs. There's actually a lot we can talk about with the gold ETF inflows and outflows. The first thing I'll call your attention to here is the 2008 global financial crisis, which basically set a record for gold inflows and it almost doubled from the previous year. So this was record


setting crisis levels and then throughout the next few years a lot of ETF outflows and that was responsible largely for the price drop in gold from 2011 to 2015. Next thing to note here is 2020, another record inflow. That was the COVID year, uh, surpassing the 2008 peak. And then we had four years of outflows. And you might think, okay, that's, you know, a risk-on environment. People don't want gold anymore. But then look what happened in 2025. Massive ETF inflows. A lot of investors flocking to


gold, higher than the 2008 financial crisis, up near COVID levels. So we are absolutely at crisis levels here. And again, let's put this together along with central bank buying to see what the trend is. As you can see , when we put these together, we get a fairly stable trend line going going all the way to 2024. And then look what happened in 2025. It absolutely shoots up record high. So combining all of these forces of monetary or investment demand, we get this massive spike up. And in case you


can't see it, let me quantify it. 62% increase in 2025 from the average line. Not necessarily from the year before, but from the average line. So again, the supply of gold only grows at 1 to 2% a year. One to two. Okay. So if we're talking about demand rising 38% from the year before or 62% above the average level, what's going to happen? Price has to adjust. That's the only way it works. supply can't respond fast enough. So, when demand goes up 62% over the long-term average, price has to


go up. So, it's not quite one to one, 62% 62%. It's mostly a coincidence that gold returned 64% last year, but we should expect both numbers in in either case. And so, you might wonder why so much demand for gold? Why are investors of all shapes and sizes flocking to gold in such great numbers? Let's go through a list. And as we go through it, ask yourself, will these factors get stronger or weaker throughout 2026? Okay. Number one, sanctions and geopolitical risk, Venezuela, [clears throat]


sovereign debt and deficits, fiscal dominance. Are countries getting more responsible with their budgets or not? Okay. Bonds are no longer risk-f free. Uh, this has been a joke to me ever since I heard it in graduate school. I don't know why we would consider bonds to be a risk-free rate. But I guess central banks and other investors are waking up to that pressure to cut rates and inflate. Okay, we saw that with uh the president and the Fed chair and it's not happening only in the United States. And finally, physical


tightness. We might call it scarcity. That's not necessarily a reason you would just go to gold on your own. Uh but when all of these other factors combine and you start going after gold and you realize it's scarce and the price gets bit up, it's like a bank run. It's that self-reinforcing feedback loop when you realize, wow, this is hard to get that makes it even more important to get it now and not wait. And we see the same thing happening with silver. So, what does this mean for the price of


gold in 2026? Well, what I'm about to say, I want to have some historical context here. So, let me remind you of what happened in the last bull run in the 1970s. In 1979, gold returned over 100%. It was about 120% in a year. So, the price more than doubled in a single year. and silver was up over 400%. So it did more than 5x in the year. And of course those prices continued to rise into 1980 before finally coming back. So there is absolutely historical precedent for both metals more than doubling in a


year. So what do I think for 2026? Well, we look at what they did in 2025. Gold did about 64%, silver 146%. The bull run in both metals is not over yet. There is definitely a lot more time and part of it is everything I've talked about in this video, massive demand for gold. I'm expecting 2026 to be a stronger performing year for gold than it was in 2025. So, it could double. I'm not saying it will. I'm not betting on this happening specifically, but it is not outside the realm of possibility,


and there is historical precedent for it. Silver could do something like 200%. I'm absolutely expecting both metals to have a stronger percentage return than they did in 2025. We see the pattern of it increasing towards the end of the bull run. That's what I think is going to happen. And by the way, I'm not alone in this. I want to remind you that JP Morgan's Jamie Diamond said gold could hit 10,000. When the world's top banker starts sounding like a gold bug, you know the reset has begun. So again, let


me paint a picture here. What does this look like? Well, here I've overlaid the current bull run in red on top of the 1970s bull run in blue. So, these are both gold. So, you can see the dates along the bottom for blue, along the top for red, and the prices along either side, blue and red. And please note that this is a logarithmic curve, not linear. And so, here we are, yesterday's close, 5,21. And you can see we're almost finished. If you measure this bull market vertically, we're actually about 84 almost 85% of


the way done with the vertical move to get to where this blue dot is. And if you're wondering, well, what does that equal in today's prices? You know, back in the 70s it was just shy of $875$873. What does that equal in today's prices? Well, it'll be just shy of $9,000, about 8,712. And according to these dates, that would happen before the end of 2026. So, is it going to happen? I don't know. But this is just how the chart lines up. I think it's absolutely fascinating. And


I don't have a reason to think that something else would happen. This seems like the base case to me. And as I look at supply and demand and all those other factors I pointed out, this seems very compelling. So, I don't have a reason to deviate from this. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); We'll see what happens. And in light of all that central bank gold buying, I want to leave us with a meme of the day. The classic tale of Rumple Stiltskin, the imp who could turn straw into gold. And monetary mayhem reminds us, "If I could


print currency to buy gold, I'd be a buyer at any price." Thanks for watching.