After 15 years of watching the markets, the more I look at gold prices lately, the more anxious I feel—not because I’m worried about a pullback, but because I sense that familiar “calm before the storm” vibe. Today, I have to talk about a hard truth: behind every major gold rally, there’s always a crisis. This iron rule hasn’t been wrong in 30 years.

Just look back at the history books. The gold surge from 1971 to 1980? The 1974 financial crisis landed right in the middle, fueling the fire. The bull market that started in 2001 was even wilder, running straight into the 2008 subprime crisis and permanently embedding the “bull market with a crisis” formula into our DNA. With gold’s current trajectory, is the market sending us a coded message?

What worries me most right now isn’t how high gold can go, but whether the dollar’s foundation can hold up. Could we see another collapse and devaluation like 1971? Even if it’s not that extreme, the current mix of policy moves pretty much guarantees long-term dollar weakness. This recent gold price surge has already priced in devaluation expectations—anyone in crypto knows that when good news is fully priced in, that’s often the top. By the time the dollar actually drops, gold might take a breather first, so don’t be the one buying at the peak.

And here’s an even harsher reality: if a crisis really hits, don’t expect gold to protect you right away. In the initial phase, everyone scrambles to sell everything for cash, and gold bleeds right along with the rest. But if you look at 1974 and 2008, once the liquidity crunch eases, that’s when gold truly shows its safe-haven qualities. At this stage, you need to think through your allocation strategy—do you front-run or wait for a pullback? How do you diversify your assets? These questions might be more important than just staring at the price chart.