If we extend the timeline to 30 years, the conclusion may make many people uncomfortable: the long-term returns of gold have already outperformed the stock market. It’s not about a specific year, not during a crisis phase, but the result of crossing inflation cycles, technological waves, financial crises, and monetary experiments.

This is not because gold suddenly became “sexy,” but because the financial system itself has changed. Over the past 30 years, global debt has expanded exponentially, currencies have been continuously rewritten, interest rates have been artificially suppressed and then forced higher, and the stock market’s rise has increasingly depended on liquidity and valuation expansion rather than growth itself. Gold, on the other hand, does not need to tell a story; it is only sensitive to one thing: whether monetary credit is being diluted.
More importantly, structural changes have occurred. In the past, stocks were growth assets, and gold was a defensive asset; now, stocks increasingly resemble leveraged liquidity tools, while gold has re-emerged as a cross-cycle asset anchor. When returns come from money printing rather than productivity, time favors gold.