If you stop measuring the U.S. stock market in dollars and measure it in gold, the picture changes completely.
In gold terms, U.S. equities haven’t been compounding wealth — they’ve been losing purchasing power. The apparent “all-time highs” are largely a reflection of dollar debasement, not real value creation. Gold doesn’t care about rate cuts, earnings narratives, or CPI optics. It measures truth in scarcity.
This is why long-cycle investors track stocks priced in hard assets, not fiat. When stocks rise but gold rises faster, real wealth is quietly rotating — not growing.
Nominal gains can