What the Heck Happened to Gold

Alexander Campbell · Campbell Ramble · March 20, 2026 at 04:29 · ⏱ 13 min read  | Read on Substack ↗
Summary
Gold's 10% crash is driven by temporary dollar strength, liquidity scrambles, and broken Asian buying channels, but the long-term bull case (structural de-dollarization, fiscal deterioration, inflation) remains intact. The author cut 80% of his book to survive the drawdown and plans to rebuild into miners once the dust settles, drawing a 2008 analog where a 25% gold selloff preceded a tripling over three years.
  • Gold fell ~10% in 24 hours, another -10 standard deviation move in two months.
  • Five bearish pressures: dollar strength (DXY near 100), higher rates (U.S. 2-year up 60bp), scramble for liquidity, broken Dubai-to-Asia gold pipe, and technical/reversion selling by CTAs.
  • The Hormuz war both causes the selloff (via dollar strength) and strengthens the long-term case (higher defense spending, fiscal deterioration, de-dollarization pressure).
  • Central bank gold buying is at record levels for three straight years: China, India (79 tonnes/month in January), Poland, Singapore, Czech Republic all adding.
  • Author cut 80% of his book, hedged silver against gold, and reduced gold to 5% with upside calls remaining.
  • Drawdowns are inevitable; the goal is to survive them (as in 2008 gold selloff) to capture the structural move over the next 2-5 years.
Read time 13 min
Length 13,845 chars
Category finance
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