Public history shows that gold and oil moved together strongly during the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, when inflation and supply disruptions pushed both higher and real interest rates were deeply negative. Gold rose from roughly 35 dollars an ounce in the early 1970s to a peak near 850 dollars in January 1980, a move that is well documented in official data and widely discussed in economic histories. Oil prices quadrupled after the 1973 embargo and roughly doubled again after 1979.
The more recent period is harder to map cleanly onto that history. Central bank gold buying, changes in real rate expectations, and the very different role of energy in headline inflation all complicate a simple one-to-one comparison. I am not certain how much of the historical co-movement reflects the same underlying driver versus coincidence of timing, and I would be wary of any tidy story that claims it does.
What separated the two episodes most, in your reading of the historical record: the inflation regime itself, the monetary response, or something about how supply shocks propagate through the economy today?
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How did the 1970s gold and oil price shocks compare with the 2020s, and what changed in how the two markets relate?
Walt H.
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