If all the most accurate historical gold predictors are combined, can they crack the future gold price?

One single thing—gold—completely stripped the mystique from so-called finance experts.

By: Jiayi

If I were to identify, throughout history, the person who has predicted a financial product—say, gold—most accurately, the most authoritative institutions, and the most famous analysts; then compare each of their predictions with the actual results, find out who is the “most accurate”… and then see what these “most accurate” people think about the future now—

wouldn’t that mean I’ve found the wealth password for this financial asset?

With that thought, I really went to do it. Using gold as the sample, I dug through more than a decade of forecasting records.

For this research, we pulled out three categories of people: the top-tier investment banks and industry institutions on Wall Street, the biggest-name “big Vs” shouting the loudest in the gold track, and the “chosen ones” who “nailed” key reversals with precise predictions.

We looked at the data one by one.

All the forecast data we found—laid out in full

Wall Street professional institutions:

• LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) invites dozens of top analysts every year to make an annual forecast for gold. In 2025, the average forecast from 28 analysts was $2,735 per ounce. The most optimistic analyst that year—Keisuke (Bill) Okui of Sumitomo—gave $2,925 because he “was the closest to actual” and won the year’s “Most Accurate Forecast Award.”

What was the actual average gold price in 2025? $3,431.

That means the analyst who was most bullish across the entire market and ended up winning still predicted a value 15% lower than the actual. And market consensus was even more off—underestimating by a full 20%.

• Goldman Sachs has two standout records in the history of gold forecasts. In April 2013, Goldman published a report clearly recommending shorting gold, with a target of $1,450. Gold then crashed 26%—and Goldman became “god-tier.”

But more recently, Goldman crashed too. In October 2024, Goldman predicted the 2025 gold price at $2,700. The actual result? Gold surged all the way in 2025, breaking above $5,600 in early 2026. It missed by a factor of two.

• JPMorgan gave a 2026 gold-price benchmark of $5,055 at the end of 2025. The gold price broke above this level early.

Gold-track big Vs:

• Peter Schiff, the most famous “always bullish” player in the gold circle. More than ten years ago, he was already calling for “$5,000 gold.” From 2013 to 2018, the gold price traded sideways for five or six years—every day he got criticized and mocked as a “stopped clock.” But in early 2026, it did break above $5,000. Latest comments (March 23): he said the recent decline is “illogical,” predicting that gold will skyrocket to $11,400 within three years.
• Jim Rickards, another long-time “$10,000 gold” big V. His core logic is that de-dollarization by BRICS will force the global monetary system to be reset. The direction wasn’t wrong, but the timeline kept getting pushed back, and the target price still hasn’t been reached.
• Robert Kiyosaki (author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad”), mid-March prediction: after an “absolutely the biggest bubble burst in history” that is coming, gold will reach $35,000.

“God-tier” players who predicted reversals accurately:

• Nouriel Roubini (“Dr. Doom”), became “god-tier” for predicting the 2008 financial crisis. He has two impressive calls on gold: in June 2013, when gold was around $1,400, he wrote that “the gold bubble is breaking,” with a target of $1,000. By the end of 2015, gold hit a low near $1,050—perfectly confirming it. In January 2023, gold hovered around $1,900; he went long, predicting that each year over the next five years would rise 10%, with a target of $3,000. Gold later far exceeded that number.
• Ben McMillan (Chief Investment Officer, IDX Advisors), stood out in the recent market action. In early 2024, when gold was around $2,000, he predicted it would reach $5,000 within five years. The market at the time thought it was “near-crazy.” The result: gold only took a year and a half to get there.
• Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater), does not give specific prices—he characterizes from a macro cycle perspective. In January 2026, he called gold the “second-largest currency” and suggested a 5–15% allocation in a portfolio.

After looking at the data, you might think—some people really are quite accurate?

Hold on. What I showed above is only their “most famous” few times. When I pulled out their full records and looked at the bigger picture, the scene is different.

Wall Street professional institutions: typical lagging forecasts

What does “lagging forecast” mean? It means that after the bull market has already arrived, they only then start raising their target prices; but the magnitude they adjust is always smaller than the actual upside. When the bear market arrives, they start cutting again—but they’re always cutting too slowly.

LBMA’s 28 analysts are the best example. They make forecasts once per year; in essence, that’s a small extrapolation of an “already-existing trend.” When the gold price had already risen to $2,700 in 2024, their median forecast for 2025 was only $2,735—basically copying last year’s closing price into the future as the forecast. The result: the 2025 average was $3,431—20% slapping them in the face.

Goldman also follows the same pattern. At the end of 2024, they looked at 2025 and gave only $2,700; later, gold surged past $5,000. JPMorgan gave a $5,055 benchmark price, and gold broke through it ahead of schedule.

What these institutions are doing—more precisely—can be called “trend confirmation”: they tell you what has already happened is indeed happening, but their judgment about the magnitude will always be conservative. If you wait for their signals to make decisions, you’ll always be one step behind.

Track “big Vs”: a broken clock can still be right twice a day

Peter Schiff has been calling for $5,000 gold for over a decade. Jim Rickards has been calling for $10,000. Kiyosaki directly calls for $35,000.

Their strategy is essentially always calling for the upside every year—when it rises, it becomes “I said it all along”; when it falls, it becomes “not yet, it hasn’t reached that time.”

More deadly is this: these forecasts have no time granularity. They don’t tell you when to enter, or when you should cut and run. If you went all-in on gold based on Schiff in 2011, you would have had to endure five or six years of sideways trading and losses just to wait until today. When you’re down 40%, belief has no stop-the-bleeding function.

God-tier players: are they really always right?

This category of people is the most misleading. Because they truly have made astonishingly accurate calls at certain key moments, so the market has granted them the halo of “prophets.” But when I pulled out their full records and looked, the picture isn’t that perfect.

Roubini got the bearish call right in 2013, and got the bullish reversal right in 2023. He caught both turning points—he’s indeed impressive.

But do you know what he missed in between? In 2009, when the gold price just broke above $1,000, Roubini publicly said it was “impossible for it to rise another 20–30%.” What happened? Gold kept rising to $1,900 in 2011, up by nearly 90%. At the end of 2009, gold reached $1,200; he then said it “looks extremely like a bubble,” and that “gold has no intrinsic value.”

Across the entire gold bull run from 2009 to 2012, Roubini repeatedly called it bearish, completely missing the move. Nobody talks about this history; everyone only remembers his nice bearish call in 2013 and his bullish reversal call in 2023.

Ben McMillan predicted in early 2024 that it would reach $5,000 within five years—and it happened in just a year and a half. The logic was built on structural changes in central banks’ gold purchases, and it was indeed right. But the problem is: this is the only time his gold-sector prediction was widely recorded. The sample size is one. Can one correct call demonstrate systematic predictive ability?

Ray Dalio sounds the most steady—he doesn’t forecast prices, he only gives allocation advice. But when you look at his macro forecasting record: in 1981 he was convinced the United States would fall into a Great Depression; he shouted about it everywhere on newspapers, on television, and in congressional hearings. The result was a total miss. Bridgewater nearly collapsed, and he even had to borrow $4,000 from his father to cover household bills. In 2015 he said, “We need to repeat 1937”—it didn’t happen. In 2018 he said, “A recession within two years”—it didn’t happen. In October 2022 he called it a “perfect storm”—that month just happened to be the bottom of the US stock market.

He predicts financial crises once every couple of years, yet most of them don’t happen. But ironically, that line of his—“You don’t need to predict prices; you just need to allocate 5–15%”—ends up being the most useful sentence among everyone.

The 2011 script is repeating in 2026

The report has one especially interesting finding.

Before the 2011 gold price topped at $1,923, the market forecasts were wildly ramped up in a step-by-step escalation: at the start of the year people predicted $2,000, by mid-year it doubled, and near the top Jim Sinclair called for $12,500, while Rob Kirby called for $15,000. The most extreme predictions appeared just weeks before the real top.

Then in September, gold crashed. How did the forecasters respond? First they said it was a “healthy correction,” then only months later—reluctantly—they lowered their targets by 20–30%, and finally they pushed the timetable indefinitely.

In March 2026, gold dropped 25% from the $5,600 all-time high to around $4,200—its biggest weekly decline since 1983. What was the reaction from most institutions and celebrities? They kept the original extremely high target prices, and even believed the crash was the “best buying opportunity.”

History won’t simply repeat itself, but the script really does look similar.

So how do they look at the future now?

Since we’ve pulled everything apart, let’s also list their latest calls so everyone can refer to them:

Person / Institution Latest Forecast Core Logic Roubini His earlier target of $3,000 has been achieved; bullish direction unchanged Inflation expectations returning + long-term structural uptrend McMillan $10,000 within five years Central bank gold purchases + Treasury debt crisis + BRICS de-dollarization Dalio No price, recommends allocating 5–15% Declining legal-currency credit structure Jamie Dimon This year could hit $10,000 Economic concerns + inflation + asset bubbles Peter Schiff $11,400 within three years Says the recent decline is “illogical” Kiyosaki $35,000 After the “biggest bubble burst in history” JPMorgan $6,300 Says the selloff is profit-taking and de-risking UBS $6,200 Maintains a bullish view

Do you see it? From $5,400 to $35,000, the highest and lowest differ by nearly 7x. Same market environment, same data sources—yet the answers given by the world’s top minds differ that much.

So, have we found the “wealth password”?

After finishing all the work, my conclusion is: I didn’t find it.

Institutions always chase; big Vs always shout; even the god-tier players aren’t always right—when they’re wrong, nobody remembers. Stack the predictions of these three categories together, and you don’t get a more accurate answer—you get even more confusion. Because at the same time points, they often contradict each other.

Turns out, I thought “find the most accurate person and follow them” was a path. After doing this research, I found that in the gold forecasting space, there simply is no one who is always the most accurate. What exists is only someone who just happened to be right this time.

Written at the end

One single thing—gold—completely stripped the mystique from so-called finance experts

Whether ALPHA can be caught by you—besides models and data—may really depend on your luck.

So, in the end, rather than trying to crack a wealth password, I decided to learn from Dalio instead—don’t forecast specific prices, admit uncertainty, and manage risk through allocation.

Gold was put into the portfolio last year, and it will continue to be added this year. For the personal time dimension, I calculate in 10-year cycles.