I got my start on Wall Street in the summer of 2003, right as gold was beginning one of the great runs of our lifetime.
At the time, I didn’t know much about anything. Not gold. Not stocks. I was just trying to survive, keep my job, and figure out how this whole thing worked.
But when you’re around markets every day, you learn fast. You watch what’s moving.
You listen to people who’ve been through cycles before. You start to notice what actually matters and what doesn’t.
By 2005, gold was breaking out to new highs and I was all in. Or at least I thought I was.
Everyone I respected was talking about it. The smartest people in the room were leaning that way.
And if you were around back then, you know exactly what I mean.
Being a “Gold Bug” wasn’t just a view, it was a whole identity. The conferences, the conversations, even the parties.
Those guys were having more fun than anyone.
Being a Gold Bug was cool.
So I leaned into it. I thought I had it figured out.
Looking back now, I didn’t.
I wasn’t a Gold Bug at all.
Turns out, I was just a trend follower.
Price Is Relative. The Denominator Matters
That experience changed the way I look at markets.
Early on, the people I was learning from weren’t just watching gold go up. They were using it as the measuring stick for everything else.
Stocks, currencies, commodities, rates. Instead of asking what something was doing in dollars, they wanted to know what it was doing in gold.
I remember sitting there in my early 20s watching these guys walk through charts of the Dow priced in gold, or currencies priced in gold, like it was the most normal thing in the world.
At the time it felt a little different. Then it started to click.
If the dollar itself is moving around, then measuring everything in dollars can distort what’s really happening. You think something is going up, but maybe the unit you’re measuring it in is just going down.
That stuck with me.
By the time I was ten years into this business, the gold bull market had already run its course and I had a much better understanding of what I had actually been doing.
I wasn’t part of some precious religion. I was just participating in a trend that happened to be in gold.
But the framework never left.
To this day, I still price assets in gold. Not because I have some emotional attachment to it, but because it gives me a cleaner read on reality.
It strips out the noise and forces you to look at relative performance in a way most people just don’t.
And that’s where I think everybody’s wrong right now.
Because when you look at the market through that lens, you’re asking a completely different question than everyone else.
The Chart No One Is Watching
Fast forward to today, and this framework is as useful as it’s ever been.
Because when you step back and look at stocks in terms of gold, you’re seeing something very different than what shows up on CNBC every day.
The S&P 500 priced in gold just hit its lowest level since 2013:
Think about that for a second.
While everyone is arguing about whether stocks are up or down in dollar terms, the reality is they’ve been losing ground in real money terms for more than a decade.
That’s not a small detail. That’s the whole story.
So now we’re at a level that matters.
Either this is a massive breakdown that confirms a long-term top in stocks relative to gold, or it’s a failed move that sets up the kind of squeeze higher most people aren’t positioned for.
That’s the fork in the road.
It’s the question that actually matters right now, and almost nobody is asking it.
Because everybody’s wrong.
If you’re serious about understanding what’s really happening in markets, this is the lens you have to look through.
And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
The World Didn’t End. It Never Does
So what does all this mean?
It means perspective matters more than the narrative.
Most people don’t have the benefit of going through multiple cycles early in their careers. I got lucky. I was in the room, listening to people who had seen this movie before, and then I got to live through it myself.
I remember the summer of 2008 like it was yesterday.
I was in Italy with my family, standing inside the Sistine Chapel, telling my dad the financial system was collapsing and gold was the only thing that would save us.
I meant it. I believed it.
Now, almost 20 years later, every time my dad sees me working on my laptop he yells from across the house, “Has the world ended yet?”
It’s a fair question.
Because if you listened to the headlines back then, or most of the headlines today, you’d think it already had.
But it hasn’t. Not even close.
And one of the best ways I know to cut through all that noise is to step back and look at assets priced in real money.
If stocks can hold here and turn higher relative to gold, that tells you everything you need to know. Not about the economy. Not about the Fed. About reality.
It tells you risk appetite is alive and well. It tells you capital is still flowing into equities. It tells you the people betting on the end of the world are, once again, on the wrong side of the trade.
If that’s the case, the play is the same as it’s always been.
Own stocks. Own the winners.
I’m not waiting around for confirmation from the headlines. I’m not debating macro narratives.
I’m looking for stocks to buy.
Just like last week. And just like the week before that.
And if this thing resolves higher, the people who stayed focused on price instead of fear are going to be the ones getting paid.
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs