Why Jim Rickards Thinks $10,000 Gold Could Arrive by Mid-2027

Published: 09-22-2026, 10:46 am

Gold has already climbed a long way in 2026. So when Jim Rickards says $10,000 is close, it’s fair to ask why. His answer isn’t a hunch. It’s a pattern he’s used before, and it called the 2015 bottom within $20 an ounce. [Source: GoldSilver interview with Jim Rickards, Sept. 17, 2026].

Key Takeaways

• Jim Rickards expects gold to reach $10,000 an ounce soon, possibly this year and likely by mid-2027.

• His case rests on arithmetic, not sentiment. Each $1,000 step gets easier because it’s a smaller percentage gain.

• He argues the same fundamentals are still driving the trade: steady central bank buying, flat mine output, and rising geopolitical risk.

• Rickards calls the Fed’s latest rate hike a mistake, because it targets inflation the Fed can’t actually reach.

• He splits inflation into three separate sources, and says monetary policy only touches one of them.

Why Could Gold Reach $10,000 Within a Year?

Rickards recorded this interview with Maggie Lake the day after the Fed raised its target range to 3.75%–4%. His timeline for $10,000 gold: “if not late this year, mid-2027.” That’s a narrow window for a $1,000-plus move.

He backs the call with a method he first learned from commodity trader Jim Rogers. The rule is simple. No commodity runs higher without a roughly 50% drawdown somewhere along the way. Rickards applied that logic to gold’s 2011–2015 cycle and projected a bottom near $1,070 an ounce. The actual low came in at about $1,050. [Source: GoldSilver interview with Jim Rickards, Sept. 17, 2026]

He’s since applied the same framework to gold’s most recent pullback, from a high near $5,400 down toward $3,900. His estimate landed close, though not exact this time. He walks through the full calculation in the interview, including why the base year you choose changes the answer.

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What Is Anchoring, and Why Does the Next $1,000 Get Easier?

This is the core of his thesis, and it’s more psychology than economics. Investors tend to fixate on the dollar amount of a move. As a result, they miss how the percentage gain keeps shrinking as the price rises.

Consider the math. Gold moving from $3,000 to $4,000 is a 33% gain, which is a heavy lift for any asset. However, a move from $9,000 to $10,000 is only about 11%. Rickards puts it plainly: that kind of move can happen “in a couple weeks” given current volatility.

In other words, the dollar increment stays the same, but the effort required keeps dropping. He calls this anchoring, because investors anchor to the $1,000 step size instead of the shrinking percentage behind it. He takes the math even further in the interview, showing why the climb from $9,000 gets easier still once gold clears the next round number.

Which Fundamentals Are Still Driving Gold Higher?

Rickards is careful to separate psychology from substance. So he lists three fundamentals he says are unchanged. First, central banks remain net buyers, led by China alongside Poland, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Second, mine output is flat, holding near 3,600 to 3,700 tonnes a year for some time now. Third, the geopolitical backdrop has gotten worse, not better.

On the geopolitical side, he points to disruptions touching the Strait of Hormuz, a Saudi pipeline, the Red Sea, and the Black Sea. Together, he says, they’re pushing costs higher across oil and grain. He connects each chokepoint to a specific inflation channel in the full conversation.

He also makes a case that China’s reported gold reserves understate the real number. The People’s Bank of China currently discloses roughly 2,380 metric tons, up from about 600 tons before 2009. Rickards believes the true figure, once a separate state entity is included, could be closer to double the official count. [Source: GoldSilver interview with Jim Rickards, Sept. 17, 2026] He explains how he arrives at that estimate using trade-flow data in the interview.

Why Is the Fed’s Latest Rate Hike Being Called “a Blunder”?

Here’s where the conversation turns to policy, and it’s the most detailed section of the interview. Rickards draws a sharp line between nominal rates and real rates. Nominal is the number the Fed sets. Real is that number minus inflation, and it’s the one that actually matters for gold.

He also argues the Fed funds rate isn’t the benchmark most people think it is. Because banks hold trillions in excess reserves, he calls Fed funds “a market that barely exists.” Instead, he points to the 10-year Treasury yield as the rate that shapes mortgages and corporate borrowing.

Then he breaks inflation into three distinct sources: cost-push, from supply shocks like the current oil disruption; demand-pull, which is behavioral, as buyers rush purchases forward; and fiscal, driven by government deficit spending. Monetary policy, he argues, barely reaches any of the three, and fiscal spending least of all.

That’s the basis for his sharpest line in the interview. He compares the Fed’s latest move to two past episodes where rate hikes met a supply-driven inflation problem, and made the resulting slowdown worse rather than better. He also shares a personal story from his own first mortgage that puts the real-rate math in blunt terms.

Want the Full Case for $10,000 Gold? Watch the Interview

This piece covers the framework. The full interview covers the receipts: Rickards’ complete anchoring math out past $10,000, his reasoning behind China’s true gold holdings, a chokepoint-by-chokepoint breakdown of the Hormuz, Red Sea, and Black Sea disruptions, and the 1974 and 1990 parallels he uses to explain why fighting a supply shock with rate hikes backfires.

Watch the full conversation between Maggie Lake and Jim Rickards here.

SOURCES
1. GoldSilver — Does $10,000 Gold Still Have a Runway?

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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