Newsletter · 2026-07-16 · Ashutosh Agarwal

Gold at $4,000 as Supercycle Dreams Meet a Bear Market - Gold & Precious Metals - Week of July 16, 2026

Gold and precious metals newsletter for the week of July 10 to 16, 2026. Gold spent the week pinned almost exactly on $4,000, more than 30% below its January record, and the podcasts split hard between supercycle bulls calling for $6,500 to $10,000, technical bears who see more downside, and operators who just keep quietly accumulating.

Gold & Precious Metals

Week of July 16, 2026: Gold at $4,000 as Supercycle Dreams Meet a Bear Market

The one-minute version

Gold spent this week doing the same thing it has done for weeks: sitting almost exactly on $4,000 and refusing to break decisively either way. On Tuesday it slid about $100 to just below $4,000 (though it never closed below that line). Then on Wednesday a surprisingly cool inflation report sent it spiking back up roughly $100, before it gave back half those gains to finish around $4,050. Silver closed at $58.58. That is the picture Peter Schiff walked through on his July 15 podcast.

Step back and the mood is split down the middle. Gold is more than 30% below the record it set earlier this year, somewhere north of $5,000, and by one count as high as $5,500. To one camp of podcast guests, that drop is a once-in-a-decade gift ahead of a "supercycle" that takes gold to $6,500, $8,000, even $10,000. To another camp, it's a popped bubble that still has further to fall. And to at least one well-known skeptic, the whole "debasement" story that gold bulls tell is simply the wrong explanation for what's going on.

Below, two groups are kept deliberately separate, because they are not the same thing: the pundits (macro commentators and forecasters selling a view) and the operators (the dealers, financiers, and mining executives with actual skin in the game). When both groups say the same thing, it's worth noticing. When they disagree, that's worth noticing too.

First, a quick definition, since it comes up constantly: the "debasement trade" is the bet that governments are running deficits so large, and carrying so much debt, that they'll eventually have to let their currencies lose value (through inflation and low interest rates) rather than pay the debt back in full, and that gold, which no government can print, is the way to protect yourself from that.

Why gold fell, the boring mechanical explanation

Before the grand theories, here's the plumbing. Several guests gave the same unglamorous reason gold has been sliding, and it has nothing to do with the end of the dollar.

Craig Hemke, who runs The KE Report, put it most plainly on his July 13 episode. The single thing most tightly connected to the gold price over history, he said, is the "real" interest rate, the interest you earn after subtracting inflation. Right now that real rate is positive, because markets think the new Fed is more likely to raise rates than cut them. As Hemke described the logic: "I can actually buy bonds. And even after inflation, I'm still coming out ahead… where gold just sits there and, you know, doesn't pay a dividend… And that's kind of the rationale behind why gold is getting dumped."

Larry McDonald, on The Julia La Roche Show (July 14), described the same force in trader's language, a "hot money flush." The gap between the 2-year Treasury yield and the Fed's policy rate is now "one of the highest spreads that we've seen since 2022," he said, which means the market is pricing in rate hikes. "When the front end of the curve moves up… that takes money out of gold because you can get 4, 4.5% on the front end… That's risk-free." He added a second reason: emerging-market countries hit by the oil-price spike from the renewed Iran conflict have been selling gold to raise cash.

So the near-term story is simple: higher short-term interest rates and a firm dollar (the dollar index is hovering around 101) make cash and bonds look more attractive than a metal that pays you nothing. That's the headwind. The rest of this newsletter is really an argument about whether that headwind is temporary or permanent.

Two other data points framed the whole week. First, the June inflation report on Wednesday came in much cooler than expected, headline prices actually fell 0.4% on the month (economists expected roughly flat), pulling the annual rate down to 3.5% from 4.2%, as Schiff detailed on his July 15 show. Schiff's warning: don't celebrate, because most of that drop came from a temporary fall in oil prices that is already reversing (oil is back near $80 as the Iran ceasefire broke down). Second, the new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, testified before Congress on Wednesday and Thursday, and the market spent the week trying to guess how hawkish he'll be.

The pundits: bulls, bears, and one big skeptic

The supercycle bulls

The loudest voices this week were also the most bullish, and they all pointed past the near-term noise to the same long-term driver: too much debt.

Jeff Currie, the former Goldman Sachs commodities chief, was the most eye-catching on Wealthion (July 9): "I could see 10,000 gold and $300 silver. I don't think that's unrealistic." His reasoning is historical pattern-matching, in the two great commodity "supercycles" he's studied (the 1970s and the 2000s), prices rose roughly sevenfold. And the engine, he argued, is debasement: "Fiat currencies have only been around since 1971. It's a short experiment," and a $40-trillion debt load leaves dollar depreciation as "the only solution."

Tavi Costa of Azuria Capital made a more detailed version of the same case on ITM Trading (July 13), where he's been calling for $8,000 gold. His core statistic: the U.S. Treasury market is only about 3% backed by gold today, versus 40–50% back in the 1940s. To get anywhere near that ratio again, gold would have to be revalued dramatically higher, he cited a level around $75,000 an ounce to put U.S. gold reserves back at 50% of the debt. He thinks the government will quietly buy gold before ever admitting it: "You need to acquire first and then make the announcement… if you're a Buffett… you're going to buy it and announce it." He was also blunt that he expects no rate hike in the next six to twelve months, even though the market has one "priced in already, 100% in six months. So it's a big call if you think it that way." On timing the bottom, he was refreshingly humble: "Bottoms are a process… don't be too strict with a certain price."

Larry McDonald rounded out the bull camp with a $6,500 gold target over the next couple of years, built on the same foundation, a slowing economy, big deficits, currency debasement, and "financial repression" (the practice of holding interest rates below the inflation rate so debt gets inflated away).

And on the far end of the spectrum, Jim Rickards, on the Rich Dad Radio Show (July 15), floated a theoretical fair value of $14,000–$15,000 an ounce based on how much gold would be needed to back the money supply. That's a thought experiment, not a near-term forecast, but it tells you how far the imaginations run in this crowd.

The "it's about AI, not just inflation" thread

A more interesting nuance ran through several conversations: the idea that gold's next big move is tied not to inflation directly, but to a possible crash in the AI-stock bubble.

Fred Hickey, the veteran tech investor, laid this out on Thoughtful Money (July 14). His fiscal math: the U.S. is paying about $1.35 trillion a year in interest on top of roughly $2 trillion in annual deficits, which he believes ties the Fed's hands, it can't raise rates aggressively without blowing the deficit even wider, so he doesn't think Warsh will. Meanwhile, he pointed to de-dollarization as a slow, steady tailwind, noting China has cut its U.S. Treasury holdings from about $1.3 trillion to $630 billion and shifted toward gold. His actual playbook, though, is patient: he's sitting on more cash than ever, waiting for a big AI-driven market correction to "keep the bat on your shoulder and wait for the fat pitch," then rotate that cash into hard assets. In other words, he's bullish on gold eventually, but expects it could get sold off first in a broad market panic before it recovers.

Peter Boockvar struck a similar note on Wealthion (July 15), where the episode title alone, "The AI Spending Bubble Is Cracking," captures the mood.

The technical bears

Not everyone thinks the bottom is in. The most disciplined bearish voice this week was Dana Lyons, alongside veteran currency strategist Marc Chandler, on The KE Report's weekend show (July 11). Lyons has been short gold, silver, and the miners since what he calls the "blow-off top" in January, and it's "the only thing we've been short the last… two or three months," which "has obviously worked out nicely."

He's not calling for a crash, just more downside before a base forms. His specific levels: he's watching the silver ETF (SLV) around 48 and the gold ETF (GLD) around 353 as places a bottom might form, and he'd cover his short in the gold-miner ETF (GDX) around 65. Crucially, he still thinks the long-term picture is a bull market, "we don't think we accelerate to the downside," just digest January's gains. His rule of thumb for whether the bull market is still intact: gold and silver need to hold onto more than half their prior run-up. If they retrace more than about 61%, "then you can stick a fork in it."

Colin Cieszynski, a technical analyst on Market Call (July 15), is in the same boat for different reasons, he rotated out of gold back in April when its momentum faded, and sees "no near-term upside catalyst."

The most measured take came from Money Tree Investing (July 15), here. The host walked through the round trip, gold ran from $2,000 to $5,500 before pulling back to $4,100 in a classic "blow-off top" fueled by too much money rushing in, made worse by some central banks selling. His advice sits between the bulls and bears: expect gold to grind sideways or drift slightly lower for the next 12–24 months before recovering, so start with small positions now rather than trying to nail the exact bottom.

The big skeptic: "It's an Asian wealth story"

The most valuable counterpoint of the week came from Jan van Eck, head of the well-known fund family, on Thoughtful Money (July 12). He directly rejected the entire debasement framing.

"Gold is not driven by inflation in the United States," he said. "It hit all-time highs last year when inflation was moderating in the US. It's more of an Asian wealth story." From that lens, the recent sell-off is no mystery at all: "So it's no surprise when Asia gets a gut punch from the Strait of Hormuz closure and the Iran war that gold sells off." He's "not bothered by this correction in gold."

Notably, van Eck's numbers on the deficit are actually less alarming than the bulls': he pegged the budget deficit at 5.8% of GDP so far this fiscal year (down from a 6.5% peak), with tax receipts up 5%. He acknowledged interest expense is rising 10% year over year, a genuine concern, but his overall read is "no big surprises from the Fed," neither tightening nor loosening. It's a useful reminder that a thoughtful, deeply informed investor can look at the same facts and simply not buy the doom narrative.

The operators: what the people with skin in the game are doing

Now to the group that actually buys, sells, mines, and finances the metal. Their commentary this week was noticeably more grounded, and, tellingly, more consistently constructive than the pundits'.

The dealer's view: physical demand vs. paper prices

Andy Schectman, who runs the bullion dealer Miles Franklin, gave a detailed on-the-ground report on Soar Financially (July 9). His central message: the falling price is "misdirection," because underneath it, the physical market is being drained. He pointed to record central-bank buying, "the most gold the central banks ever bought ever in a quarter, quarter one, 2026", and to the futures market, where the number of outstanding contracts (open interest) has fallen to what he thinks may be an all-time low. Why that matters: "when you have that little bit of open interest, it can be outsized moves with just a little bit of demand," because there aren't many traders left willing to bet against gold.

He also described real damage in the physical supply chain from the earlier price spike: U.S. silver refiners were "destroyed" and ran 16 weeks backordered, because when silver rocketed from $120 toward $60 (and back), the hedges refiners use to protect themselves triggered enormous margin calls. That's normalizing now, he said, and the wave of customers selling into the rally has ended, replaced by "increasing interest" to buy again.

The financier: "There's no capital for juniors"? False.

One of the most useful reality-checks came from Collin Kettell, CEO of the investment company Palisades Gold, interviewed from the Rick Rule Symposium on The David Lin Report (July 15). A common complaint from small mining companies is that there's no money available to fund them. Kettell called that "definitely false." His firm has done roughly 450 financings, about one a day, over the past 18 months, deploying about $500 million across 330 companies.

His strategy is worth understanding because it explains why he's so bullish. Palisades focuses on warrants, which are like long-dated options to buy a stock at a fixed price. In a deal, the firm gets shares plus warrants, sells the shares to get its money back, and keeps the warrants "riding free." He gave a live example: a company called Galantis Gold that raised money at 8 cents last December with a three-year warrant priced at 12 cents. Palisades sold its shares at 40 cents four months later, turning $800,000 into $4 million, and still holds 10 million warrants now worth millions more with the stock around 50 cents. It's a vivid illustration of the leverage that draws money into tiny explorers when sentiment turns. His verdict on the current market: it's actually getting harder to get generous warrant terms, because competition for the best deals has heated up since late 2025, a sign of money quietly coming back in.

Rick Rule: gold is "stupidly under-owned"

The veteran resource investor Rick Rule delivered the week's most quotable bull case on Palisades Gold Radio (July 11). His favorite statistic: gold and gold-related securities make up just 0.5% of American savings and investment assets today, versus a four-decade average of about 2%, and roughly 7% back in 1981. "If gold reverts to mean," he said, "demand increases fourfold in the largest savings and investment asset country in the world."

He framed the case as being about the downside, not the upside: "I'm trying to tell you that your downside is upside." His math on why cash isn't safe: the 10-year Treasury yields 4.6%, but he believes the dollar is losing purchasing power at "8% to 10% compounded", so on his "unconventional arithmetic," a Treasury buyer actually loses about 4% a year. "You put up $100,000 and you got back $50,000. Not a very good deal." He expects the dollar to repeat its 1970s performance, losing 75% of its remaining purchasing power over the next decade, while an ounce of gold keeps buying "a very fine men's suit," a suit he thinks will cost $15,000 in ten years.

And he offered a genuinely clarifying test for when he'd sell: the U.S. would have to balance its federal budget, pay down $40 trillion in debt, solve $120 trillion in unfunded retirement promises, and deliver positive real interest rates, which he figures would require a 10% Treasury yield and 12% mortgages. "How long do you think the American taxpayer would stand for that?" The odds of that within ten years, he said, are "functionally nil." (One aside worth flagging for the separation between talk and action: Rule mentioned he is personally "a large shareholder of Agnico Eagle", a rare direct reference this week to one of the big senior miners.)

The miners: cheap stocks, fat margins, real projects

The most concrete evidence came from mining executives themselves. On The KE Report (July 15), the leadership of Dakota Gold (NYSE American: DC) walked through the numbers on their flagship Richmond Hill project in South Dakota's historic Homestake District. Using conservative price assumptions of $2,350 gold and $29 silver, well below today's spot, the project pencils out to 2.6 million ounces of gold over a 17-year life, an all-in sustaining cost of just $1,047 an ounce, initial construction cost of $384 million, and an after-tax value (NPV) of $1.6 billion with a 55% internal rate of return. At today's much higher gold price, those economics look dramatically better. The company has $107 million in the bank from a February financing, funding it "all the way to shovel ready," with a more detailed study due in Q4 2026 and production targeted for 2029. CFO Sean Campbell also leaned on the "made in America" angle: "you can get your gold exposure in this time of geopolitical uncertainty without any sort of international exposure."

That "cheap stock, fat margin" theme recurred on the pundit side too. Craig Hemke pointed out that even with the pullback, producers are still enjoying enormous profit margins, average selling prices for gold ran around $4,350 in the first quarter and silver around $73 (per estimates from analyst John Rubino), while it costs many producers only in the high $20s to mid $30s per ounce to mine silver. Yet the mining stocks, he lamented, "are probably barely up at all" versus a year ago even though gold itself is up about 15%. "None of it really makes any sense unless gold is going back to $3,000." His conclusion: long-term, the miners look like a good investment given those fundamentals, but the summer is a low-conviction, low-volume slog.

Juniors and explorers: patience required

Among the smaller companies, the tone was "be selective." Newsletter writer Erik Wetterling, on The KE Report (July 14), argued for favoring advanced developers with lots of proven ounces in the ground, he named Banyan Gold, Troilus, Liberty Gold, and Montage Gold, over speculative early-stage explorers, precisely because money is scarce and being drawn toward AI, making dilution a real risk for companies that constantly need to raise cash.

A trader's-eye view came from Steve Barton on In it to Win it (July 12), who noted the gold-miner ETF (GDX) fell 3.7% on the week and had traced out a "bear flag," but said he's set buy orders on miners in case of a flash crash down toward $3,500 gold, and leans bullish for the near term on a positive momentum signal.

Silver, and the China question

Silver ($58.58 to close the week) got its own dedicated bull case from Alasdair Macleod on Commodity Culture (July 12), under the blunt title "10 Times Higher." Macleod's argument is really about China. He estimates the Chinese state has quietly accumulated something like 40,000–48,000 tons of gold, roughly 20,000 tons by 2002 plus another 20,000–25,000 since, with a further ~28,000 tons moved into private Chinese hands through the Shanghai Gold Exchange. His metaphor for gold that goes into China: "Hotel California… you're welcome to come in… but you ain't leaving."

He flagged two very recent, concrete developments: Hong Kong just launched a central gold clearing-and-settlement system, with six major banks (including JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank) signing on, and the People's Bank of China eased its rules so gold can move more freely from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Macleod reads this as China building the plumbing for a gold-centered trading system as insurance against what he believes is the inevitable failure of paper currencies.

Nomi Prins made the supply-side silver case on Palisades Gold Radio (July 9). Silver, she said, is now in its sixth straight year of supply deficits, the world uses more than it mines, yet the price has been beaten down because paper trading (ETFs and futures) has ballooned to roughly double the physical silver actually backing it. She likes "pure-play" silver miners such as Aya Gold & Silver and First Majestic, plus copper juniors and uranium (she singled out UEC), arguing the physical shortage will eventually win out over the paper price. She also relayed the central-bank data point that anchors the whole bull thesis: about 45% of surveyed central banks are at a record high in their desire to buy gold, with Asia and the Middle East accumulating physical metal.

The bottom line

The tell this week is the split between the two groups. The pundits are loudly divided, supercycle targets of $6,500 to $10,000 on one side, a "you haven't seen the bottom yet" technical case on the other, and Jan van Eck reminding everyone that the whole debasement story might be the wrong lens entirely.

The operators, meanwhile, are quietly doing the same thing they've done all year: central banks keep buying, the physical market stays tight, a financier is doing a deal a day, and a mining CEO is showing off a project that mints money at prices far below today's. They're not calling the bottom to the dollar. But almost none of them are selling.

That gap, between the noisy, whipsawing price and the calm accumulation underneath it, is the debate in a nutshell. As Tavi Costa put it, bottoms are a process, not a price. This week, the process continued.