24 September 1869: Black Friday: the great gold corner collapses
Speculators Jay Gould and James Fisk had tried to corner the gold market, driving prices up sharply. On this Friday, President Grant ordered the Treasury to sell gold, and the price collapsed within minutes. Many investors were ruined and the panic spread to stocks. Gould escaped relatively unscathed, but the episode became a classic tale of manipulation and government intervention.
The lesson: Markets that look cornered can collapse instantly when a bigger player decides to step in.
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
- 5 April 1933: FDR orders Americans to hand in their gold
- 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
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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