Original Title: "If we gather the people who have predicted gold prices best in history, can we decipher future gold prices? I have compiled the most accurate analysis of gold for ten years."
Original Author: JiaYi, Founder of GeekCartel
If I gather the people who have predicted a financial product—such as gold—the best in history, the most authoritative institutions, and the most famous analysts, and compare each of their predictions with actual results to find out "who is the most accurate"… then look at how these "most accurate people" view the future now?
Could I then have grasped the wealth code of this financial asset?
With this thought in mind, I really went to do it. Taking gold as a sample, I combed through over a decade of prediction records.
For this research, we brought out three types of people: the top investment banks and industry institutions on Wall Street, the big voices in the gold sector, and the "legendary players" who accurately predicted key reversals.
We look at the data one by one.
We have gathered the prediction data and laid it all out
Wall Street Professional Institutions:
· LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) invites dozens of top analysts each year to make annual predictions for gold. In 2025, the average prediction from 28 analysts is $2,735/ounce. The most optimistic analyst that year, Keisuke (Bill) Okui from Sumitomo Corporation, predicted $2,925 and took home the "Most Accurate Prediction Award" for being "closest to reality."
What was the actual average gold price in 2025? $3,431.
This means that the most bullish and eventual award-winning analyst's prediction was still 15% lower than actual prices. The market consensus underestimated by a full 20%.
· Goldman Sachs has two notable records in the history of gold predictions. In April 2013, Goldman Sachs issued a report clearly recommending to short gold with a target of $1,450. Gold then plummeted by 26%, and Goldman was revered.
But recently, Goldman flopped. In October 2024, Goldman Sachs predicted a gold price of $2,700 for 2025.
What happened? The gold price skyrocketed in 2025, breaking past $5,600 in early 2026. It was off by double.
· JPMorgan set the baseline for the 2026 gold price at $5,055 by the end of 2025. The result was that the gold price broke through this level ahead of time.
Big Voice in Gold:
· Peter Schiff, the most famous "always bullish" figure in the gold circle. Over a decade ago, he was already calling for "$5,000 gold." Between 2013 and 2018, gold prices remained stagnant for five to six years, and he faced daily criticism, being mocked as a "broken clock." However, gold did indeed surpass $5,000 in early 2026. His latest statement (March 23) declared that the recent decline is "illogical," predicting gold prices would soar to $11,400 within three years.
· Jim Rickards, another big voice insisting on "$10,000 gold." His core logic is that de-dollarization of BRICS nations will force a reset of the global monetary system. The direction is correct, but the timeline keeps getting pushed back, with the target price not yet realized.
· Robert Kiyosaki (author of "Rich Dad Poor Dad") predicted in mid-March that after the upcoming "biggest bubble burst in history," gold will reach $35,000.
Legendary Players Who Accurately Predicted Reversals:
· Nouriel Roubini ("Dr. Doom"), who became famous for predicting the 2008 financial crisis. He made two excellent judgments on gold: in June 2013, with gold prices around $1,400, he stated in an article that "the gold bubble is bursting," targeting $1,000. At the end of 2015, gold prices touched a low of $1,050, confirming his prediction perfectly. In January 2023, while gold hovered around $1,900, he flipped bullish, predicting a 10% increase each year over the next five years, targeting $3,000. The gold price later far exceeded that figure.
· Ben McMillan (Chief Investment Officer at IDX Advisors), who stood out in recent market conditions. In early 2024, with gold around $2,000, he predicted it would reach $5,000 within five years. At the time, the market thought this was "almost crazy." However, the gold price made it within just a year and a half.
· Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater), did not give specific prices but made qualitative judgments from a macroeconomic cycle perspective. In January 2026, he referred to gold as "the second-largest currency," suggesting a portfolio allocation of 5-15%.
After reviewing the data, you may think—some people are actually quite accurate?
Not so fast. The above are just their "most famous moments." When I pulled out their complete records, the picture looked different.
Wall Street Professional Institutions: Typical Lagging Predictions
What is a lagging prediction? It's when the bull market has already arrived, and they only start to raise target prices; but the extent of the adjustment never catches up to the actual rise. When the bear market arrives, they start to lower again but always too slowly.
LBMA's 28 analysts are the best example. They make predictions once a year, which essentially extrapolates slightly from "trends that have already occurred." By 2024, when the gold price has risen to $2,700, their median prediction for 2025 was only $2,735—essentially carrying over last year's closing price as the forecast. The actual 2025 average price was $3,431, beating the prediction by 20%.
Goldman Sachs follows the same pattern. At the end of 2024, they only set a prediction of $2,700 for 2025, while the gold price later surged past $5,000. JPMorgan set a baseline of $5,055, and the gold price broke through ahead of schedule.
What these institutions are doing is more accurately described as **"trend confirmation"**—telling you that what has already happened is indeed happening, but their judgments on the extent are always conservative. If you wait for their signals to make decisions, you will always be a step behind.
Big Voices: A Broken Clock Can Be Right Twice a Day
Peter Schiff has been calling for $5,000 gold for over a decade. Jim Rickards has been insisting on $10,000. Kiyosaki is directly calling for $35,000.
Their strategy is essentially to call for rises every year; when prices rise, it's "I said it long ago," and when prices fall, it's "not yet the right time."
The more fatal issue is: these predictions lack temporal granularity. They do not tell you when to enter and when to exit. If you had fully invested in gold listening to Schiff back in 2011, you would have to endure five or six years of stagnation and losses before waiting until today. Faith does not provide a stop-loss function when you are down 40%.
Legendary Players: Have They Always Been Accurate?
This category of people is the most misleading. Because they did make astonishingly accurate judgments at crucial moments, the market granted them the aura of "prophets." But when I pulled out their complete records, the picture is not so perfect.
Roubini was correct on the bearish call in 2013 and the bullish flip in 2023. He indeed caught both turning points, which is impressive.
But do you know what he missed in between? In 2009, when gold prices had just broken through $1,000, Roubini publicly stated that "it is impossible for prices to rise by 20-30% more." What was the result? Gold prices rose all the way to $1,900 in 2011, an increase of nearly 90%. At the end of 2009, when gold prices hit $1,200, he again said, "looks very much like a bubble," and "gold has no intrinsic value."
During the entire gold bull market from 2009 to 2012, Roubini repeatedly called for bearishness, completely missing out. No one mentions this history; they only remember his impressive bearish call in 2013 and his bullish turn in 2023.
Ben McMillan predicted $5,000 in five years in early 2024, achieving it in just a year and a half. His logic was based on structural changes in central bank gold purchases, which indeed turned out to be correct. But the problem is: this is the only widely recorded prediction he has made in the gold field. The sample size is just one. Does one success indicate systematic predictive ability?
Ray Dalio sounds the most stable—not predicting prices, just providing allocation advice. But if you look at his macro prediction record: in 1981, he firmly believed that the U.S. was heading for a Great Depression, shouting this everywhere in newspapers, on television, and at congressional hearings, resulting in a colossal mistake that nearly bankrupted Bridgewater, forcing him to borrow $4,000 from his father to pay family bills. In 2015, he stated, "we are going to relive 1937," which did not happen. In 2018, he claimed, "a recession within two years," which also did not occur. In October 2022, he shouted about a "perfect storm"—that month happened to be the bottom of the U.S. stock market.
Almost every two to three years, he predicts a financial crisis, the vast majority of which do not materialize. Ironically, his statement "you don’t need to predict prices, just allocate 5-15%" became the most useful piece of advice among them all.
2011's Script Is Being Replayed in 2026
There’s a particularly interesting finding in the report.
Before gold prices peaked at $1,923 in 2011, market predictions skyrocketed: at the beginning of the year, everyone predicted $2,000; by mid-year, it was doubled; and close to the top, Jim Sinclair called for $12,500, and Rob Kirby called for $15,000. The most extreme predictions appeared just a few weeks before the actual top.
Then in September, gold prices plummeted. What was the reaction of the predictors? First, they said it was a "healthy correction", then it took several months for them to reluctantly reduce their target prices by 20-30%, and ultimately pushed the timeline indefinitely.
In March 2026, gold prices plummeted 25% from a historical high of $5,600 to around $4,200—marking the largest single-week drop since 1983. What was the response of the vast majority of institutions and celebrities? They maintained their already extremely high target prices, even considering the plunge to be "the best buying opportunity."
History doesn’t simply repeat, but the script does indeed bear a resemblance.
So, how do they view the future now?
Since I've gathered this all, let's also outline their latest judgments for reference:
· Roubini believes the previous target of $3,000 has been achieved, and his bullish direction remains unchanged, with the core logic being: return of inflation expectations + long-term structural rise.
· McMillan predicts it will reach $10,000 within five years, with the core logic being: central banks buying gold + U.S. debt crisis + BRICS de-dollarization.
· Dalio still does not give prices, suggesting allocation of 5-15% due to structural declines in fiat currency credit.
· Jamie Dimon believes it could touch $10,000 within this year, with the core logic being: economic concerns + inflation + asset bubbles.
· Peter Schiff believes it will reach $11,400 within three years, stating that the recent decline is "illogical".
· Kiyosaki believes it can reach $35,000 after the "biggest bubble burst in history."
· JPMorgan believes it will reach $6,300, with the core logic being: the drop is profit-taking.
· Goldman Sachs believes the price will reach $5,400, with the core logic being: the bull market has not ended.
· UBS believes it will reach $6,200, and remains bullish.
Do you see that? From $5,400 to $35,000, the highest and lowest predictions differ by nearly 7 times. In the same market environment and with the same data sources, these top minds in the world provide answers that can vary so drastically.
So, have we found the "wealth code"?
After completing all this organization, I conclude: we haven’t found it.
Institutions are always chasing, big voices are always calling, and legendary players are not always accurate—they are only right at specific moments, while no one remembers when they were wrong. Layering the predictions of these three types of people does not yield a more accurate answer but rather creates more confusion. Because they often contradict each other at the same point in time.
I initially thought "finding the most accurate person and following them" was a path. After conducting this research, I discovered that in the field of gold prediction, there is simply no "consistently most accurate person," only those who happened to be right this time.
In Conclusion
Just one thing about gold has completely demystified so-called financial experts for me.
Whether ALPHA can be captured by you depends not only on models and data but also possibly on fate.
So, in the end, rather than trying to decipher the wealth code, I decided to learn from Dalio—do not predict specific prices, acknowledge uncertainty, and manage risk through allocation.
I will continue to accumulate gold this year, having started last year. In terms of the personal investment time dimension, I calculate based on a 10-year cycle.
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