“It’s Going Up—A Lot”: Inside Jim Rickards’ Latest Gold Price Prediction for 2025

Setting the Stage: A Third Great Bull Market and the Case for Higher Gold

Gold has a way of pulling the macro conversation back to first principles. It is not a software platform, a quarterly guidance story, or a momentum fad; it is a centuries-old monetary metal that tends to reassert itself whenever confidence in policy or paper claims thins out. That is the spirit of the argument Jim Rickards advances in his latest prediction: gold is not only going up, it is going up a lot. The assertion is bold, but it is not offered as a slogan. It rests on a framework that combines cycle history since the end of the classical gold standard, a simple but powerful retracement logic drawn from commodity behavior, and a sober appreciation of how percentage math works when prices migrate from one regime to another.

Rickards breaks the modern gold story into three epochs that begin in 1971, when the metal ceased to be legally fixed to the U.S. dollar and started trading freely as an asset whose price could rise or fall with supply, demand, and monetary conditions. In that post-1971 world, the metal has moved through a first great bull market in the 1970s, a second major advance from 1999 to 2011, and a third bull market that he dates from December 2015. The line he draws from those epochs to the present is not merely descriptive; it is intended to calibrate the magnitude and duration that a current cycle could plausibly achieve if it rhymes with its predecessors.

At the heart of his forecast is a thesis that many investors find both exhilarating and disorienting: if this third bull market were to deliver gains within the range of the prior two advances—or even the average of those two—the price path that falls out of the math points to levels that most market participants still perceive as extreme. His shorthand target is $15,000 per ounce by 2025. Whether or not one accepts that endpoint, understanding the underlying scaffolding is valuable because it highlights why incremental $100 moves begin to feel smaller as the price scale rises, why volatility is a feature rather than a bug, and why a buy-and-hold posture often outperforms tactical whipsawing in a trend that persists for years.

This article unpacks Rickards’ argument from the ground up. It retraces the three modern bull markets, explains the 50 percent retracement rule of thumb that marked the 2015 low, shows how compounding percentage gains change the psychology of daily price action, and explores the practical implications for investors who are deciding whether they “missed the boat” or are still at an early station. Along the way, it treats volatility as a companion rather than a foe, surveys the macro motives that commonly accompany sustained gold advances, and sets out scenario paths that connect today’s price neighborhood to possible outcomes over the next stretch of the cycle.

From Money to Market: Why 1971 Is the Modern Starting Line

Gold behaved differently before 1971 because the rules were different. When a currency promises to redeem into a fixed quantity of gold, the price is policy, not discovery; gains are capped by definition. The post-1971 universe replaced that peg with a market, which allowed price to express the health—or weakness—of the monetary system. The first modern bull market ran from the early 1970s into 1980 and produced a rise of roughly 2,700 percent, reflecting an era of inflation surges, oil shocks, and fractures in institutional trust. A prolonged bear market followed into the late 1990s, pushing the metal toward multi-decade lows near $250.

In 1999 the tone flipped. A second bull market carried gold to about $1,900 by August 2011—an approximate gain of 670 percent from that $250 base—during a period that included the dot-com unwinding, the global financial crisis, and unconventional monetary policy that redefined central banking. Then came a downtrend from 2011 to 2015. This ebb flowed into what Rickards argues is the third great bull market of the modern era, beginning December 16, 2015, when the spot price in U.S. dollars printed near $1,050.

This chronology matters because it supplies the statistical backdrop for thinking about what is normal versus surprising during gold cycles. Post-peg bull markets have not been timid. They have been multi-year advances with multi-hundred-percent gains, separated by painful, multi-year drawdowns that reset expectations and positioning. If you only zoom into a twelve-month window, you miss the signature of the long wave.

The 50 Percent Retracement Insight: How a Commodity Tends to Breathe

The line that connects 2015’s low to the psychology of the current run partly rests on a simple commodity habit summarized in a remark Rickards attributes to Jim Rogers: no commodity goes to the moon without a big retracement along the way, often on the order of fifty percent. The second bull market from 1999 to 2011 offers the relevant staircase. From the $250 base to the $1,900 high is an increase of $1,650. Chop that gain in half and you get about $825. Subtract that from $1,900 and you land near $1,075. The 2015 low at roughly $1,050 is therefore within the margin of that 50 percent giveback. For investors who saw that level in real time, it was a meaningful signal that the prior bull market’s expansion had been fully retraced in textbook fashion, setting the stage for a fresh advance.

This is not mysticism. It is the way trend and liquidation work together in commodity markets that must continuously re-price inventory, hedges, and risk budgets. After a long up-move, leveraged participants and latecomers get washed out, weak hands transfer claims to stronger hands, and the market resets. When the shakeout exhausts buyers’ remorse and sellers’ enthusiasm at a level consistent with the prior expansion’s midpoint, the path of least resistance often flips back in favor of the primary trend—if the structural reasons to own the commodity persist.

The importance of that 2015 level is not simply that it marked a line on a chart; it resolved a question about whether the 2011–2015 downturn was a regime change or a cyclical purge. By treating the move as the latter, Rickards positions the subsequent years not as a grinding plateau but as the first act of a new secular leg.

Measuring the Current Leg: “Almost 90 Percent” and Why It Feels Smaller Than It Is

From $1,050 in December 2015 to recent levels near $1,900 and beyond, the gain is on the order of eighty-plus percent. For some investors, that already feels late; they tend to translate percentage gains into a sensation of distance traveled. Rickards’ answer is to place that number beside the scale of the previous bull markets. If 2,700 percent and 670 percent are former benchmarks, then 80–90 percent is not the destination; it is a warm-up. The comparison is not a guarantee that the current move must match or exceed prior episodes, but it is a strong argument that, by historical gold standards, the present rally is still young in both magnitude and, possibly, time.

The psychology of incremental price changes shifts as absolute price levels climb. A $100 pop from $1,800 to $1,900 is a 5.6 percent move; the same $100 pop from $1,900 to $2,000 is 5.3 percent. As the price migrates to $3,000 or $4,000, a $100 daily change collapses to 3.3 percent or 2.5 percent. In other words, nominal increments that once felt like events become routine ticks when the denominator grows. That math dulls the drama of headlines while accelerating the compound effect. It also makes it easier for the market to deliver “ladder” gains—$3,000, $4,000, $5,000, and so on—without each rung feeling like a once-in-a-decade shock.

Understanding that arithmetic is not a party trick. It conditions expectations about what daily volatility means in proportional terms and helps investors avoid overreacting to ordinary noise as if each move were a structural verdict.

The $15,000 Target by 2025: How Averaging Prior Bull Markets Leads to a Shocking Number

Rickards’ headline figure—$15,000 per ounce by 2025—does not derive from a hidden valuation spreadsheet. It is the product of a simple exercise: take the two prior post-1971 bull markets, average their magnitude and length, and apply those averages to the cycle that began in December 2015. The projected outcome lands near $15,000 by the 2025 waypoint.

To many ears, that sounds like a lottery ticket. Rickards’ counterpoint is that the figure is less fantastic when you treat it as a compounding path rather than a single leap. To travel from $2,000 to $15,000, the journey necessarily passes through $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, and so forth. Investors do not need to be clairvoyant about the terminal value to benefit from the itinerary. If the thesis is broadly right, then there are many profitable miles between here and there, and waiting for a perfect entry is usually a way to miss a trend.

The logic is deliberately blunt because it is teaching a discipline: in long cycles, the dangerous decisions are not usually buying too early or selling too late; they are allowing short-term volatility to knock you out of a position that a few quarters later looks obvious. When the market’s job is to force the fewest participants to profit, the easiest victims are those who allow anxiety to substitute for a plan.

Volatility Is a Feature, Not a Flaw: Buy-and-Hold in a Choppy Uptrend

Even the most durable gold advances have been messy. That is why Rickards emphasizes a buy-and-hold posture. He does not deny drawdowns; he expects them. Those air pockets are the tolls the market collects in exchange for long-run gains. The commitment to stay invested is easiest when you anchor your view in cycle logic rather than headline flurries. Pullbacks that feel terrifying in the moment often reveal themselves as routine retests when plotted across the full move.

For investors conditioned by the equity market’s habit of drawing a straight line up over years, gold’s stop-start rhythm can be jarring. Impulse trading—chasing strength, dumping weakness—usually hands coins to counterparties who specialize in harvesting emotion. The alternative is position sizing that respects your own risk tolerance, time horizons that match the thesis, and a mental model that treats volatility as a natural property of the asset rather than a verdict on your judgment.

This is not an argument to be reckless. It is a reminder that risk is not the same as volatility, and that the main risk in a multi-year trend is being structurally wrong, not experiencing turbulence along the way. If your thesis rests on the notion that the monetary and macro forces which powered prior bull markets have not gone away—in some respects have intensified—then drawdowns are opportunities to add rather than invitations to abandon.

Credibility Without a Pitch: Understanding Versus Selling

One of the conversational obstacles in the gold world is the suspicion that anyone who speaks bullishly must be talking their book as a dealer. Rickards addresses this head-on: he is not a bullion merchant looking to clear inventory; he is a writer and analyst. The distinction is not meant to disparage dealers, many of whom are serious market students. It is meant to defuse the reflex that collapses an argument into the speaker’s presumed commercial motive.

That credibility angle matters because gold discourse attracts extremes—apocalyptic forecasts that treat the metal as the only lifeboat, and dismissive takes that caricature it as a relic. An analysis that is neither inflating fear nor hawking product can sit in the middle and talk about cycles, policy errors, and investor behavior in plain terms. You can still disagree with the endpoint. But it is easier to assess a thesis that is not trying to get you to check out at the online cart.

The Psychology of “I Missed the Boat”: Why Denial Is Expensive

One of the more penetrating observations in Rickards’ commentary is about denial. Investors often rationalize inaction with the story that they were too late: the price has already run, therefore it must be due to fall, therefore better to wait for the “inevitable” pullback, therefore better to do nothing now. The issue with that loop is not that it is always wrong; sometimes waiting is prudent. The issue is that it can become a habit that misses entire cycles because the mind keeps moving the goalposts. The pullback you promised yourself you would buy finally arrives, but it arrives from a higher plateau. The courage you hoped would appear still does not show up.

The antidote to that mental trap is a plan that pre-decides how you will handle the future you claim to expect. If you think gold is heading materially higher over multiple years but you are worried about buying tops, choose tranches. Define price zones where you will add regardless of headlines. Set a core allocation that you will not trade, then maintain a smaller trading sleeve if you must scratch the tactical itch. The plan can be modest. What matters is that it exists so that temporary fear does not become a permanent excuse.

How Simple Math Rewires Expectations: From $100 Chunks to Percentage Drift

When you recalibrate your expectations to percentage changes, a curious thing happens: event risk shrinks. A $100 surge that once absorbed your attention becomes noise at a higher base price. As the market climbs, the same dollar increments occur more frequently because they represent smaller percentage moves. That pattern often puzzles investors who anchor to absolute dollars. They perceive acceleration where there is, in fact, proportional steadiness.

This reframing helps you avoid misinterpreting the tape. When a market starts treating $100 steps as half-percent adjustments, it is telling you the scale has shifted. That does not guarantee future gains. It does signal that your mind should stop gasping at every headline and start viewing the staircase through the lens of compounding. It is the difference between watching waves crash at the shoreline and studying the tide charts.

Gold’s Macro Companions: Why Bull Markets Rarely Come Alone

The transcript’s analytical spine is cycle math, but no gold discussion is complete without nodding to macro companions that often travel with sustained advances. While we are not invoking any single data release or newly minted statistic, the pattern across decades is familiar. Real interest rates are powerful: when inflation-adjusted yields compress or turn negative, the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset like gold declines, and investor demand tends to increase. Confidence in monetary policy matters: when market participants doubt that central banks can deliver price stability without collateral damage, they seek hedges. Geopolitical stress and war premiums can add episodic bursts to the demand curve, but the more durable driver is the structural urge to diversify away from reliance on any one country’s liabilities.

Financial system architecture matters too. In periods when leverage builds up in risk assets or when credit cycles turn, gold’s lack of counterparty risk—the fact that a bar is not someone else’s promise—becomes more than a slogan. Reserve behavior at the official level can reinforce these themes as central banks adjust their own portfolios over time. None of these factors alone dictate price. Together, they create a climate in which a secular trend is more likely to persist.

Anatomy of the 2015 Turn: From Capitulation to Construction

When gold printed near $1,050 in December 2015, fatigue was palpable. It felt as though the metal had surrendered the gains of the post-crisis center years and was drifting toward apathy. The mood was precisely the kind of exhaustion that tends to mark important lows. What followed was not an immediate moonshot but a patient sequence: a rebound that reintroduced optimism, shakeouts that punished overeager leverage, basing periods that allowed the market to digest supply, and stair steps that pulled the price back toward the 2011 highs. That entire choreography fits the commodity breathing pattern described earlier and ratifies the interpretation that the 2011–2015 slope was a cyclical retracement within a longer bullish picture, rather than a repudiation of gold’s role.

Understanding that anatomy is useful because it equips you to tolerate the present. If you can remember what the early years of the current bull leg felt like—uncertain, contested, easily discouraged—you can better diagnose today’s talking points as familiar rather than novel. Skepticism always shows up at the beginning and the middle of a cycle; it only disappears at the end, when confidence is universal and risk is highest.

Silver at the Margin: The Sister Metal’s Leverage in Bull Phases

While the focus of Rickards’ remarks is gold, the conversation nods toward a pattern many commodity traders know well: silver tends to lag at first and then sprint. In prior cycles, when gold builds a base and begins to trend, silver often underperforms until confidence takes hold. Then, in the middle to later portions of a bull move, silver’s dual identity—as both monetary cousin and industrial input—can produce outsized percentage gains relative to gold. That does not make silver an alternative to or a replacement for gold. It makes it a levered expression of similar forces with a different risk profile.

For diversified precious metals investors, the implication is not to abandon gold for silver but to understand the roles. Gold is the core monetary hedge with deeper liquidity and less violent swings. Silver is the satellite that may amplify returns during the heart of an advance but also tends to correct more sharply. Position sizing and temperament should drive the mix, not slogans about which metal is “better.”

Technical Memory: Retests of Highs and Why “Kissing” Records Matters

Rickards notes that, on an intraday basis, gold has “kissed” its all-time highs. The importance of that phrase is not merely nostalgic. Markets have memory. Prior peaks are reference points where supply historically overwhelmed demand. When price revisits those zones, the test is about whether the market still respects that memory or whether it has matured enough to absorb it. Successful retests—when price breaks through, backs up to the old high, finds buyers, and moves on—are signs of trend health. Failed retests—when price is violently rejected—do not kill a bull, but they lengthen the timeline.

For participants who prefer to blend macro with technicals, this is the period when patience pays. Chasing the first poke through a record often invites whipsaw. Waiting for the market to prove that the old ceiling has become a floor helps reduce the probability that you are buying a spike. That said, in multi-year trends, missing the perfect breakout day rarely matters unless your horizon is days, not years.

Strategy Without Drama: Building and Managing Exposure Over Time

If you accept the premise that the current bull market began in December 2015 and still has room to run, the most practical question is not where the price will be in December 2025. It is how to build and manage exposure without letting fear or euphoria dominate your decisions. The principles are straightforward.

Start by deciding your role. Are you an allocator who wants a core gold position as a long-term holding because it diversifies macro risk? Or are you trying to time swings? The transcript’s spirit leans toward the former: a buy-and-hold stance that frowns on over-trading. If you choose that path, determine a base percentage of your portfolio you are willing to devote to gold and stick to it through cycles. Add on weakness if you can. Rebalance if the position balloons beyond your tolerance, but avoid selling simply because headlines say “overbought.”

If you must trade a sleeve, define the rules in advance. What constitutes a pullback worth buying? How will you size entries so that a 5–10 percent downdraft does not force a panic exit? What signal—technical, macro, or behavioral—would tell you that the bull thesis is broken? Write these answers down before the market tests you. The goal is not to eliminate emotion but to ensure it does not have veto power over your plan.

Risk Is Real: What Could Go Wrong—and How to Respect It

Every thesis earns credibility by acknowledging what can break it. A benign inflation glide path coupled with rising real yields can cool appetite for gold by lifting the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset. A period of strong, synchronized global growth that eases financial stress can redirect flows into risk assets and away from hedges. A structural dollar rally, especially one that tightens global dollar liquidity, can weigh on commodities priced in dollars. Policy surprises—credible fiscal discipline that changes trajectory expectations, for example—can also slow gold’s ascent.

These possibilities are not disproofs of the bull case; they are variables a prudent investor respects. The way to treat them is not by trying to predict every twist but by ensuring that your exposure is sized so that these detours do not force you to abandon the journey. In other words, build robustness into your allocation rather than demanding a perfect road.

Scenarios From Here: A Map Without Pretending to Be a GPS

The distance between today’s price and the $15,000 conjecture has room for many paths. Even if one never expects that exact figure, sketching scenarios clarifies how the next phases might look.

In a steady ascent scenario, gold holds above prior breakout zones and prints a series of higher highs and higher lows while volatility remains present but contained. This version aligns with the “$100 is only half a percent now” idea; daily moves feel less sensational because the base has broadened. In a stair-step scenario, price surges above the old records, invites a sharp pullback that shakes out momentum buyers, and then builds a fresh base higher than the last before resuming. This is the commodity breathing pattern writ large. In a late-cycle acceleration scenario, macro catalysts—policy error, credit tremor, geopolitical escalation—push investors to pay up for hedges, producing a vertical phase that compresses gains into a shorter window and tempts top-calling.

In any of these, the common challenge is the same: the market tries to separate the investors who built a plan from those who improvisationally swing their exposure based on feels. The best defense is not to be smarter than the next person day to day, but to be more consistent than your former self.

The Long Memory of Gold: Why the Asset Keeps Returning to the Center of the Conversation

Gold’s persistence in financial debate is not an accident. It is a mirror that reflects the state of our confidence in promises. When the world trusts that policymakers can calibrate rates, deficits, and liquidity with minimal side effects, the mirror is boring. When trust frays—when inflation prints surprise, when debt trajectories look unglued, when institutions wobble—the mirror begins to glow. The price is not only a number; it is a mood.

That is why the post-1971 chronology matters so much. It shows that periods of complacency and despair are not permanent. It shows that bull markets do not appear out of nowhere; they are the sum of many small disappointments in paper claims and many quiet decisions by investors to allocate a slice of their future to something that does not depend on someone else’s ability to perform. It shows that what feels shocking in any given year often looks ordinary when you zoom out ten.

A Word About Time Horizons: Years, Not Weeks

Rickards’ $15,000 by 2025 statement, taken literally, narrows the horizon to a tight window. The right way to translate it into a personal plan is to stretch the lens just enough to keep from turning the prediction into a deadline that can embarrass you into inaction or overreaction. If the core of the thesis is that this is the third great bull market of the modern era and that it still has distance to travel, whether the climax occurs in 2025 or later is not the hinge of the decision to own some gold now. If you treat the cycle as a multi-year phenomenon, the day-to-day vicissitudes shrink to their proper size.

That does not mean you ignore time completely. It means you match it to your needs. If you have near-term liabilities that cannot tolerate drawdowns, gold’s volatility deserves respect. If you are allocating a fraction of long-term capital in pursuit of diversification and inflation insurance, the patience to ride the cycle becomes an asset rather than a burden.

Building Conviction Without Becoming a Zealot

One of the healthiest tones in Rickards’ commentary is that he does not frame gold as a cult. He does not suggest you should replace every other asset with metal. He suggests you should understand what gold is, why it moves in cycles, and how the current cycle fits within the modern pattern. That posture allows you to hold conviction without sliding into absolutism. You can cheer a rising price without rooting for economic trouble. You can recognize that some environments are friendlier to gold than others without demanding that every environment conform.

Cult thinking is dangerous in markets because it collapses nuance into loyalty. If you are “Team Gold” and nothing else, then every contrary data point becomes an insult rather than information. The objective is to be long because the thesis is sound, not because membership in a tribe requires it. That distinction makes it easier to adjust if the facts change and to hold if the facts do not.

The Practical Reality of Buying on Dips: Courage, Cash, and Calendars

“Buy more when it goes down” is easy to say and hard to do. The only way it becomes doable is if you pre-arrange the conditions. Courage by itself is not a strategy; it needs cash. That means keeping a small reserve that is earmarked for downturns so you are not forced to sell something else at a bad time. It also needs a calendar. If you tell yourself you will buy the next 8–12 percent pullback, and you do not, write down why. Was the news too scary? Was the move too fast? Was your size too ambitious? Adjust the rule and try again. The aim is not perfection; it is to be slightly better every cycle than you were in the last.

This mindset also defangs one of the market’s favorite tricks: making you feel foolish for both buying and not buying. If you purchase and the price falls, your plan anticipated that possibility and limited your size. If you wait and the price runs, your plan anticipated that possibility too and preserved a core position that rides the trend. Guilt is not an investment edge. Process is.

The Narrative Versus the Tape: How to Listen Without Being Led

Gold attracts thick narratives. Some are grand—civilization, collapse, rebirth. Some are narrow—mining costs, jewelry demand, ETF flows. Tuning them out entirely is a mistake; they are clues. But allowing any single narrative to dictate your exposure can be as hazardous as ignoring them. The antidote is to let the tape arbitrate disputes among stories. If a narrative insists that gold must fall but price refuses, weight the tape more. If the narrative insists that gold must rise but price keeps slipping, ask what you are missing.

This approach frees you from being a hostage to eloquence. The best storytellers in markets are not always right; they are just persuasive. Price, with all its imperfections, is a composite vote of the world’s incentives. It deserves a seat at your table whenever you weigh reasons.

Beyond the Number: What $15,000 Symbolizes Even If It Never Prints

Fixating on the exact $15,000 value risks missing the message. The figure symbolizes something larger: the capacity of a secular gold bull market to climb far enough and long enough that yesterday’s “unthinkable” becomes tomorrow’s “well, of course.” Every major cycle in the metal’s post-1971 life has rewritten what participants believed was possible. The first time, it shattered the idea that a monetary metal must behave like a static relic. The second time, it proved that a long expansion could occur even after two decades of disillusionment. A third time would reinforce that the structure of fiat finance supplies a renewable bid for non-credit stores of value whenever the system asks for patience that society cannot supply.

If you dislike the poetry of that sentence, reduce it to arithmetic: if the third bull market lands anywhere in the rough neighborhood implied by prior cycles, then a price that now sounds like hyperbole is simply a point on a curve.

A Calm Conclusion: What to Do With a Bold Prediction

Rickards offers a forceful view: gold is in its third great modern bull market; the 2015 low fit a classic retracement pattern; the present gain, while substantial, is small compared with prior advances; and the average of those advances points, astonishingly, toward $15,000 by 2025. You do not have to endorse that terminal number to learn from the scaffolding underneath it. The lessons are practical and durable.

Treat gold’s history since 1971 as a teacher about how long waves behave. Respect the 50 percent retracement habit in commodities as a clue that 2015 signaled a new act. Reframe your sense of daily moves by thinking in percentages rather than dollar chunks. Expect volatility and plan for it instead of letting it push you around. Build exposure patiently, with a core you will not trade and a small sleeve you can, if you must. Size positions so that detours do not exile you from a trend you claim to believe in. Keep your mind open to risk without letting fear cancel the journey.

Most of all, act on your own timeline. If you regard gold as a long-term store of value that benefits from the mistakes of paper money, then the exact year the cycle peaks is less important than being present for the path. If the thesis is right, there will be many rungs between here and there. If it is wrong, you will know because the tape and the macro will tell you, and your plan will permit you to change your mind without drama.

The metal does not require faith; it requires context and patience. That is the unglamorous truth inside a glamorous headline. Gold is going up, Rickards says, and going up a lot. The simple, disciplined way to engage that claim is to decide how much of the move you need to catch to meet your own goals—and to arrange your behavior so that, in the inevitable noise, you do not accidentally let go.