Eurozone Gold price up 58 per cent since 2020

According to the recently published 2024 edition of the ‘In Gold we trust’ report, the value of gold is up almost 60 per cent in the Eurozone since the beginning of 2020. The situation is very similar in other regions of the world: In the US, the gold price has risen 51 per cent, in the UK 60 per cent, and in Australia 76 per cent. The same is true for Asia: gold gained 57 per cent in China, 76 per cent in India, and as much as 119 per cent in Japan – within a period of just four years and five months.

Strong gold performance since the turn of the millennium

The analysis of the decade-by-decade development of gold prices for individual regions in the ‘In Gold we trust’ report offers a good overview of the long-term performance of gold. In the Eurozone, the precious metal appreciated by 168 per cent from 2000 to 2009, followed by 77 per cent in the second decade of the new millennium. In the US, the gold price rose by as much as 281 per cent in the first decade, but only 38 per cent in the second. In the first decade of the 2000s in particular, growth rates worldwide were in the triple digits – e.g. in India at 307 per cent, the UK at 280 per cent, Japan at 246 per cent or China at 214 per cent. In the second decade, regional gold appreciation remained more in the double digits. This predominantly positive development of the gold price over the past 23 years should not obscure the fact that the precious metal can also go through longer dry spells and that gold should therefore be regarded as a long-term portfolio addition. Gold suffered a small loss of 3 per cent in the decade from 1980 to 1989 and a more significant one of 15 per cent from 1990 to 1999.

The value of gold is not actually rising – fiat currencies are losing value

Gold has proven its worth as a store of value and inflation protection for thousands of years. The example of the amount of loaves of bread that can be bought for an ounce of gold is a well-known visualisation: the purchasing power of the precious metal today does not significantly differ from that during the life of Jesus Christ. The fact that it is not gold that is really becoming more valuable, but fiat currencies which are losing purchasing power, is illuminated by the price trend of the precious metal in countries that have been particularly hard hit by inflation and economic crises, such as Turkey, where the price of gold has risen 721 per cent since the beginning of 2020, or Argentina, where the price of the precious metal has increased by 2,106 per cent over the same period.