Not about whether gold has had a good run, but about what gold actually is and what it costs to own it over the long term. On long-term returns: from 1980 to the end of 2019, before the recent surge, gold returned 197% in total. On inflation hedging: one of the most rigorous academic analyses of gold, The Golden Dilemma, examined this directly. Between 2011 and 2024, the price of cornflakes rose faster than the price of gold. Gold doesn’t do anything.