5 April 1933: FDR orders Americans to hand in their gold
On April 5, 1933 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, requiring Americans to turn in most gold coins, bullion and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve at $20.67 an ounce. Hoarding became a crime. Less than a year later the government revalued gold to $35 an ounce, a jump of about 69%, after it had collected the metal. Private gold ownership in the US was not fully legal again until 1975.
The lesson: A safe-haven asset is only as safe as the rules that let you keep it.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Gold (oz) at the start of 1990 → $10,500 today, vs $19,429 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1990, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 10.5 times the money, but $8,929 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Gold (oz) teaches: Gold pays no income, so its returns arrive in rare bursts separated by long droughts; it took almost three decades to regain its 1980 nominal high.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $400 | $10,500 | $19,429 |
| 1995 | $385 | $10,909 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $290 | $14,483 | $4,626 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Gold (oz)? Every starting year and the full story →
More Gold (oz) history
- 21 January 1980: Gold spikes to $850 an ounce
- 17 March 1968: The gold pool collapses
- 20 June 2013: Gold sinks below $1,300 after the Fed's taper talk
- 22 July 1944: Bretton Woods rebuilds the money system
- 15 August 1971: Nixon closes the gold window
- 24 September 1869: Black Friday: the great gold corner collapses
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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