Entry price
This condition asks whether gold looks expensive or cheap compared with its own past. It asks two things. First, is today's price above or below its own recent trend? Second, once you strip out inflation, does gold look pricey or cheap next to its long-run history?
- Share of the score
- 20%
- Share used today
- 22.2%
- Source
- World Bank Pink Sheet monthly gold price (CC BY 4.0)
- How often it updates
- monthly
- Date of the newest figure
- 2026-08-31
- Newest figure
- 4411 US dollars per troy ounce
- How fresh it is
- Up to date. The newest figure is 20 days old, and we stop counting this part once it passes 45 days. An old figure left counting would quietly drag the score toward whatever was true last month.
- How strong the evidence is
- strong. Both checks rest on published research, the trend check and the dear-or-cheap check
What we look at
We blend two things, each published separately. The first is trend: how far today's price sits from its 12-month average, plus the 12-month return. The second is valuation: today's inflation-adjusted gold price ranked against its own long-run history.
Why it matters if you're buying gold
Two ordinary habits of prices sit behind this one. The first is that a price which has been climbing tends to keep climbing for a while. People notice a move and join it, and that keeps the move going for weeks or months (Moskowitz, Ooi and Pedersen; Hurst, Ooi and Pedersen). The second works over far longer stretches. Once you strip out rising prices, gold has kept drifting back toward its own middle. It rarely stays very cheap or very dear for long (Erb and Harvey, the golden constant). One of these pulls over months, the other over years. They can point opposite ways in the same month. When they do we show you both, rather than picking the one that reads better.
What this cannot tell you
Strong on both pieces, at different time horizons. Trend is a near-term signal (weeks to months). Valuation is a multi-year signal. The two can point in opposite directions in the same month. Both numbers are on this page, and the blend carries both.
Today's reading in plain words
Today this condition reads 24/100, below the historical middle.
The pieces we blend
| Piece | Score | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Where the price sits against its own year | 47/100 | Sits 0.5% below its own 12-month average. Up 19.29% over 12 months. Gold price used: $4375.62 per ounce. |
| The price against its own past | 1/100 | After inflation, today's price is higher than 99.19% of all past months. |
How the score is worked out
Trend and valuation each get their own 0 to 100 rank against their own past. Then we combine them into this condition's score. Valuation is set so a low real price gives a high score. Trend is set so a price well below its own trend gives a high score.
Which way it points. A low real price against history, and a price below its 12-month trend, both push the score higher.
What the evidence says
- Moskowitz, Ooi and Pedersen (2012, Journal of Financial Economics) document momentum in many assets. Gold enters their study from December 1969. Hurst, Ooi and Pedersen (2017) is the follow-up. Results are pooled across asset classes, with the cautions the authors report.
- Valuation work by Erb and Harvey ('Gold, the Golden Constant, and Deja Vu', 2020) and their earlier 'The Golden Constant'. Their finding is simple. When the real gold price sits above its long-run average, real returns over many years have tended to be below average.
- Faber (2007) shows a 10-month moving-average rule cuts the biggest drop along the way in a mixed portfolio. No published gold-only 200-day-moving-average study exists in peer-reviewed literature. We do not claim one.
If you are selling
If you are selling, the valuation piece flips cleanly. A real price at the top of its long-run history is exactly when later real returns have tended to be weakest. The trend piece flips too. Selling into a positive 12-month trend has historically fetched a better price than selling into weakness.
Source: World Bank Pink Sheet (CC BY 4.0) for the historical monthly price. The inflation adjuster is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index (CPI-U CUSR0000SA0). See the methodology page for the full formula, and the provenance page for where each number comes from and how fresh it is.