Silver Rises Over 120% YTD 
Published: 07-29-2026, 11:27 am | Updated: 07-29-2026, 11:28 am
Key Takeaways
- Gold ran from $35 to $850 between 1971 and 1980 — a gain of more than 20 times in under a decade.
- In the middle of that run, from 1974 to 1976, gold fell approximately 47 percent. Most analysts declared the bull market finished.
- It wasn’t. Gold went on to nearly eight times the correction low by January 1980.
- The mechanism that drove the first leg — a currency steadily losing purchasing power — never changed during the correction. Only the price changed.
- Central banks nearly doubled their annual gold purchases after 2022, crossing 1,000 tonnes per year. The institutions that issue fiat currency are quietly accumulating the asset they cannot print more of.
- GoldSilver’s Megan King Diaz walks through this chart in full — and draws the parallel to right now — in the video below.
What Was Gold’s Price in the 1970s?
Before 1971, the United States government fixed gold at $35 per ounce. That price was not a market price. It was a government ceiling, set at Bretton Woods in 1944, when 44 nations agreed to tie their currencies to the dollar and the dollar to gold.
On August 15, 1971, President Nixon ended that arrangement. The dollar was no longer convertible to gold. For the first time in decades, gold could find its own market price.
It did. Quickly.
By the end of 1971, gold had already risen to around $43. Within two years, it had climbed to above $120. By December 1974, it had climbed to roughly $195 per ounce. Consequently, investors who had bought at $35 were sitting on gains of more than 400 percent in three years.
Then everything changed — or appeared to.
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What Happened to Gold in the Middle of the 1970s Bull Market?
From December 1974 to late 1976, gold fell approximately 47 percent. [Source: World Gold Council / LBMA Historical Data]
That is not a rounding error. It is nearly half the value of the asset, erased over roughly two years.
Specifically, gold dropped from the $195 high to around $112 per ounce by August 1976. The financial press treated it as confirmation of what the skeptics had said all along. In August 1976, Time magazine ran a cover story on precious metals called “The Great Gold Bust.” The consensus read: the gold experiment was over. The dollar system had survived. Rational investors were moving on.
By contrast, the investors who held through that correction would watch gold run from that trough to $850 by January 1980 — a gain of more than 650 percent. [Source: LBMA Historical Data]
The total return from the 1971 low to the 1980 peak: more than 20 times. [Source: LBMA / Federal Reserve History]
Most people missed most of it.
Why Did Gold Fall 47 Percent If the Bull Market Was Still Intact?
This is the question that separates investors who understand the mechanism from those who only follow the price.
The mid-1970s correction did not happen because the underlying thesis for gold changed. The dollar was still losing purchasing power. The federal government was still running deficits. Inflation was still running above the Fed’s comfort level. None of that shifted between December 1974 and late 1976.
What did shift was positioning. The first leg of the gold bull had pulled in a large wave of speculative capital. That capital needed to exit before the next leg could begin. Notably, the U.S. government actively worked to suppress gold’s price during this period, pushing for International Monetary Fund auctions of gold reserves and arguing globally that gold should be removed from the monetary system entirely. [Source: Federal Reserve History / IMF Historical Archives]
The price fell. The mechanism did not.
Subsequently, when the second oil shock hit in 1979 — followed by the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — the same structural driver (a currency losing value faster than investors expected) reasserted itself. Gold ran from roughly $112 to $850 in less than four years.
Paul Volcker ultimately ended the cycle. As Fed Chair, he raised the federal funds rate to approximately 20 percent, deliberately crushing inflation and making yield-bearing cash genuinely attractive. [Source: Federal Reserve History] For the first time in a decade, holding cash cost less than holding gold. The bull market ended — not because gold was wrong, but because the mechanism that drove it was finally neutralized.
That distinction matters. The 1970s gold bull did not end because sentiment shifted or because investors got nervous. It ended because the real yield environment reversed completely. That is a very different thing from a 47 percent correction inside an intact monetary trend.
How Does the 1970s Compare to Gold Today?
That is precisely the question Megan King Diaz answers in the video above — with the chart.
What we can say here: gold reached an all-time high of $5,589.38 per ounce on January 28, 2026. [Source: World Gold Council] As of today, it trades near $4,000 — approximately 28 percent below that peak. [Source: goldsilver.com/price-charts/]
Specifically, the structural driver of the current gold bull — central bank reserve diversification away from the dollar — has not reversed. Central banks bought more than 1,000 tonnes of gold per year in 2022, 2023, and 2024, nearly double the average annual pace of the prior decade. [Source: World Gold Council Gold Demand Trends] That shift began in earnest after Russia’s dollar reserves were frozen in 2022. The institutions that issue fiat currency drew a clear conclusion: dollar assets carry political risk that gold does not.
Furthermore, inflation has not returned to the Fed’s 2 percent target. Real yields remain the critical variable. And the dollar is still a fiat currency that governments can print in unlimited quantities — while gold supply grows at less than 1 percent per year. [Source: World Gold Council]
The slow clock, as Megan calls it, is still ticking.
Whether today’s correction rhymes with 1974–1976 — or resolves differently — is what the video above is built around. The chart is worth seeing. The current parallel is worth understanding.
What Finally Ended the 1970s Gold Bull Market?
It was not a correction. It was not a bad headline. It was not a shift in investor sentiment.
It was Volcker.
The Fed Chair raised rates to approximately 20 percent, made cash genuinely pay more than inflation, and eliminated the mechanism that had driven gold for a decade. [Source: Federal Reserve History] Gold entered a 20-year bear market. Inflation-adjusted gold prices would not recover to their 1980 levels until 2024.
Until the underlying mechanism changes — until the dollar stops losing purchasing power, or until real yields rise high enough to make cash attractive again — the historical record suggests corrections are part of the journey, not the end of it.
The 1976 investors who read Time magazine and sold never found out.
People Also Ask
Gold fell approximately 47 percent from its 1974 peak of roughly $195 per ounce to its 1976 trough of around $112 per ounce. [Source: LBMA Historical Data / World Gold Council] That correction lasted approximately two years. Gold subsequently ran from that trough to $850 by January 1980 — a gain of more than 650 percent — as inflation accelerated and the dollar continued to lose purchasing power.
The 1974–1976 gold correction had two primary causes. First, speculative capital from the first leg of the bull market needed to exit. Second, the U.S. government actively worked to suppress gold prices during this period, orchestrating International Monetary Fund gold auctions and lobbying internationally to remove gold from the monetary system. The underlying driver of the bull market — a dollar losing purchasing power — did not change. [Source: IMF Historical Archives / Federal Reserve History]
Gold rose more than 20 times in the 1970s because the U.S. dollar was no longer convertible to gold after Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system in August 1971. [Source: Federal Reserve History] Without the gold backing, the dollar’s purchasing power fell as the government ran deficits and the Federal Reserve kept rates below the inflation rate. Two oil shocks, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan accelerated the move. Gold’s price reflected what the dollar was quietly doing: losing value.
Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker ended the 1970s gold bull market by raising the federal funds rate to approximately 20 percent. [Source: Federal Reserve History] That level of rate tightening made cash genuinely attractive in real terms for the first time in a decade. When the mechanism driving gold — negative or near-zero real yields — reversed completely, the bull market ended. It did not end because gold was wrong. It ended because the conditions that made gold necessary changed.
That comparison requires looking at the actual chart — which Megan King Diaz walks through in the video above. What the historical record does confirm: the current correction from the January 28, 2026 all-time high of $5,589.38 is approximately 28 percent, which is inside the range of corrections seen in prior gold bull markets. Whether the structural mechanism driving the current bull — central bank reserve diversification and persistent dollar debasement — has reversed is the question worth answering before drawing any conclusion. [Source: World Gold Council / goldsilver.com/price-charts/]
The Slow Clock Is Still Ticking
Gold’s price moves on two timescales. The fast one — Fed policy, dollar strength, real yields — sets the price for weeks and months. Corrections live here. The slow one — the long-term erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power — sets the direction for years and decades. Bull markets live here.
The 1976 correction looked fatal on the fast clock. On the slow clock, it was noise.
Ultimately, understanding which clock you are watching is the difference between the investor who sold in 1976 and the one who didn’t. The chart from the 1970s that Megan walks through in the video above makes that distinction visual in a way that prose cannot.
Watch the full video to see the chart, the parallel, and what Megan sees when she compares the shape of the 1970s to right now.
SOURCES
1. World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2022; Gold Demand Trends 2023–2024; Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey
2. LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) — Historical Gold Price Data
3. Federal Reserve History — The Volcker Disinflation; Nixon and the End of the Bretton Woods System
4. GoldSilver.com — Gold Price Cycles and Market Trends
5. GoldSilver.com — Live Gold and Silver Price Charts (spot prices as of July 29, 2026)
6. IMF Historical Archives — 1976 Gold Auctions and De-monetization Policy
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.
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