Gold Glow Fades: Is the Bull Run Over?

Meanwhile, a record 85% of S&P 500 companies have beaten profit forecasts this quarter, marking the strongest earnings season since 2021.

1. Gold Mini-Crash: End of the Bull Run?

Gold tumbled more than 6% on Tuesday, marking its biggest one-day drop in over 12 years, as this year’s record-breaking rally reversed sharply after the Diwali buying season. After reaching an all-time high of $4,381.52 per troy ounce on Monday, prices fell 6.3% to $4,082.03 the next day, in what many viewed as a long-overdue correction.

The magnitude of this move is striking: a rare 4.46-sigma event. In statistical terms, such movements should occur roughly once every 240,000 trading days under normal market conditions.

Goldman Sachs summed it up bluntly: "The best answer we have for the largest % move in 10 years is (simply) positioning, and that we’ve rallied for 9 consecutive weeks. The ease of trading an ETF for quick exposure has been on full display; as of [Tuesday’s] close GLD accounted for 8% of all notional US-listed ETF volumes, its largest share of activity in our dataset. Flows on the ETF desks skewed (unsurprisingly) strongly better for sale today".

2. The Long-Term Case for Gold

The current gold secular bull market is tracking higher than the early-2000s move and lower than the 1970s bull.

The last two major bull markets peaked at key moments of crisis:

• January 1980: at the height of fears over eternal stagflation
• September 2011: just after S&P downgraded the US credit rating

This bull market looks far more like 2011 than 1980. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Source: @3F_Research, Warren Pies

3. US Earnings Season Exceeds Expectations Across the Board

The share of US companies surpassing earnings expectations this quarter is the highest since 2021. About 85% of S&P 500 firms that have reported Q3 results so far have exceeded profit forecasts.

4. AI Bubble Fears Are Rising

A record 33% of fund managers now cite an AI-driven equity bubble as the biggest tail risk to markets.

A tail risk refers to a rare but severe event that can trigger sharp market losses and fundamentally shift valuations and sentiment.

5. The Boom of Interactive Broker

Interactive Brokers (NASDAQ:IBKR) may be one of the most overlooked growth stories of the past decade. The total number of accounts has surged nearly 20x since 2012.

In its latest quarter, the firm reported an operating margin of 79% (!). Is there another company on earth with margins that high?

Source: Fiscal.ai (formerly FinChat) @fiscal_ai

6. Leveraged ETFs: Growth Going Parabolic

The boom in leveraged ETFs is accelerating, with filings for 3× and even 5× products now hitting the SEC. Assets in leveraged and inverse ETFs have doubled since 2023, reaching record highs.

7. A Gold-to-Bitcoin Rotation Ahead?

According to Bitwise, a 5% reallocation of capital from gold to bitcoin could drive BTC prices toward $242,000.