I’ve been keeping an eye on gold price trends recently and found an interesting phenomenon. Over the past 50+ years, gold has climbed from $35 in 1971 to over $5,000 today—an increase of more than 145 times. What logic lies behind this unusually long bull run? Will it continue into the next 50 years?

Looking back at history, gold price movements have a very clear pattern. Every time a major bull market appears, it doesn’t happen out of thin air. Behind it are credit crises combined with loose monetary policies. In 1971, when the U.S. dollar broke away from the gold standard, people lost confidence in the dollar. Gold then surged from $35 to $850, rising 24-fold. After that, in 2001, the dot-com bubble burst. The U.S. began cutting interest rates to rescue the market, and gold rose again—from $250 to $1,921—an increase of more than 700%. After 2019, as global de-dollarization took hold, central banks bought gold frantically, and geopolitical turmoil escalated, gold prices surged from $1,200 all the way to over $5,000.

But there’s an important detail here. All three bull markets share a common feature: the rally unfolds in stages. In the early phase, prices slowly grind and form a base; in the middle phase, crises act as catalysts that accelerate the rally; in the late phase, speculation enters and leads to overheating. On average, each bull market lasts 8 to 10 years, with gains of 7 to 24 times. The most crucial point is that every bull market ends when central banks begin aggressive tightening to suppress inflation. In 1980, the Fed raised interest rates by more than 20%, and gold collapsed by 80% directly. In 2011, after QE ended, gold entered a long bear market lasting 8 years.

But now the situation is different. Government debt in major global economies has already gotten extremely high, and central banks simply can’t raise interest rates as drastically as they did in the past. What does that mean? It may be that the traditional, clean, and decisive tightening cycle won’t play out. A more likely scenario is that gold prices will violently fluctuate within a very high price range for several years, forming what’s known as a “high-level consolidation period.”

So is gold worth investing in? Honestly, it depends on the time horizon. Looking at the past 50 years, gold’s gains are similar to stocks—if not better. But if you invested in gold during the 20-year period from 1980 to 2000, it would have been essentially a no-profit scenario, plus you’d have to bear the opportunity cost. How many 20-year periods can life really give you to wait? So my view is that gold is a very good investment tool, but it’s more suitable for swing trading than for simply holding long-term. Bull markets are usually accompanied by macroeconomic crises, while bear markets tend to be prolonged and sluggish. Getting the cycle right can bring big swings of profit; getting it wrong may mean being stuck in place for many years.

There are many ways to invest in gold. Physical gold is the most direct, but it’s inconvenient to trade. Gold savings accounts and ETFs have better liquidity and are suitable for long-term allocation. But if you want to do short-term swing trading, futures or Contracts for Difference (CFDs) are more flexible—they allow two-way trading, use leverage to amplify returns, and have higher capital efficiency. With smaller amounts, you can open an account easily, making them well suited for retail investors.

Finally, another angle. The return logic for gold, stocks, and bonds is completely different. Gold depends on price spreads; stocks depend on corporate growth; bonds depend on interest payments. In terms of difficulty, bonds are the easiest, gold is next, and stocks are the hardest. But in terms of returns over the past 30 years, stocks have actually performed better than gold. The basic investment logic is to pick stocks during periods of economic growth and allocate to gold during economic downturns. The safest approach is to set the allocation proportions between stocks, bonds, and gold according to your personal risk profile. In that way, when facing sudden political or economic events, your portfolio can effectively offset volatility risk and make your investments more robust.