In September 2011, gold reached a nominal record of $1,920 an ounce, the summit of the bull market that had begun a decade earlier. The catalysts were a European sovereign-debt crisis that threatened to break the euro and a US debt-ceiling standoff that cost America its triple-A credit rating from S&P for the first time in history.
It was nearly a sixfold gain from gold's 2001 average — from around $270 to almost $1,600 on an annual-average basis. But the top was in. As the immediate crisis faded and the Fed signaled an eventual end to easy money, gold entered a four-year correction that would carry it down toward $1,050 by 2015. The next record would not come until the pandemic of 2020.
Key events of 2011
- 2011-08-05
US credit downgrade
S&P strips the US of its AAA rating amid the debt-ceiling standoff.
- 2011-09-06
The $1,920 record
Gold sets a nominal all-time high at the height of the euro crisis.