Goldtent TA Paradise

Bull market drawdowns – a short history

1. pedro_deleon says:

   August 2, 2026 - 5:53 pm at 5:53 pm

   Don’t forget to examine your premise as well.

   “secular bull market”

   They end too, you know. Especially after parabolic ramps (aka BUBBLES).

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2. Lifeguard says:

   August 2, 2026 - 6:24 pm at 6:24 pm

   Hey Pedro, it’s something I’ve considered carefully. But if the secular bull really ended in January, it would be unprecedented. Think about what that claim actually requires.

   Silver only closed above its 2011 high in October 2025. That’s a 14 year base. And in doing it, it also took out $50 – a ceiling that held since January 1980. So the “top is in” is basically saying silver spent 46 years building a base/coiling and then burned through the entire resulting bull in about 16 WEEKS. Come on!

   Gold’s the same story – 2011 to 2023 was a 12 year base that didn’t complete until it cleared ~$2,070 in Dec 2023. That makes this gold bull barely 2 years old at the January’26 peak. The last two secular bulls each ran about 10 years and did 7-24x. Long bases lead to long bulls, not 16-week wonders.

   I believe we’ve seen a similar generational breakout before: gold taking out its 1980 high in late 2007, after 28 years. That bull ran another 2.3x over 3.6 more years – and remember, in the 2008 panic gold crashed all the way back BELOW the breakout level. A total failed retest. But the bull still wasn’t over then. Today – gold’s July’26 low was $3,976, nearly double the old $2,070 ceiling. Silver’s low was $55.50, still above the 46 year line at $50. So we haven’t even retested the breakouts, let alone broken them.

   And as I mentioned in the piece, the drawdowns themselves are nothing unusual. Gold -27%, silver -52%. Gold fell 46% in 74-76 and then did 8x. Silver fell 57% in 2008 and then did 5.4x. Every secular bull has at least one gut-punch like this in the middle, and the biggest gains always came after. A real top looks like 2011 with years of grinding down below the 200-week MA. Right now gold is 42% ABOVE its 200-week and up 22% y/y. Silver’s 56% above and up 50%.

   Remember what actually killed the last bull. It wasn’t actually the end of money printing – gold fell straight through QE3. What killed it was that the story behind gold got better instead of worse: the big inflation everyone was bracing for never showed up, Washington actually CUT the deficit way down after the 2011 debt ceiling fight, and rates went up. So the reasons to own gold basically evaporated. Now look at today. Debt crosses $40 trillion this week. It’s growing $12 billion a DAY and the interest bill alone is over $1 trillion a year. Inflation still won’t go away, and nobody in Washington is even pretending to cut spending. All of that is extremely supportive of gold imo.

   Could this time be different? Sure, anything’s possible. But it would make this the shortest secular bull ever, topping 4 months after a 46 year breakout, with price still above every level that matters and while the debt spiral speeds up. I agree it’s good to be skeptical but this is what a mid-bull shakeout looks like.

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