Dow vs Gold since 1900
Two of the longest public price series on earth, on one log axis. Both rebased to 100 in 1900, so a century and a quarter of relative performance — industrial capital vs the monetary metal — is directly comparable.
■ Dow Jones (100 = 1900)■ Gold (100 = 1900)
Log scale
Both series rebased to 1900 = 100. Log axis: equal % moves are equal height, so the centuries are comparable. Sources: MeasuringWorth — daily Dow, NY gold market price.
Reading the two lines
- 1900–1971 — they moved together. For seven decades both tracks hugged the same log slope: gold at ~$20 then $35/oz, the Dow climbing through the 1920s, the crash, and the postwar boom. Under a fixed dollar, the two were roughly comparable stores of purchasing power.
- 1971 is the hinge. The moment the dollar left gold, the two began to diverge in nominal terms. This is where the honest inflation caveat bites hardest: the Dow's post-1971 nominal gain is heavily a dollar-denominated gain, not a real one.
- Gold's 1970s spike vs the Dow's 1970s flatline. In the inflation decade, gold (the hard asset) briefly outpaced equities in index terms — the one period where the metal clearly won.
- 1980–2000 — equities' long victory. Disinflation + the tech boom drove the Dow index far above gold on the log scale. Gold bled for 20 years.
- 2000s — gold catches up. Two equity bear markets (2000, 2008) and two gold bulls (2000–11, 2019–present) closed much of the log gap.
- The bottom line (nominal): since 1900 the Dow rebased to 100 now sits near ~103,700, gold near ~16,700 — the Dow has nominally outrun gold by roughly 6×. But strip out the post-1971 dollar debasement and the real gap is far smaller — which is exactly why the macrotrend view pairs a nominal line with the raw gold price and the CPI-inflation story on the companion charts.