Take $10,000 and travel back to the year 2000. Would you bet on gold or US stocks?

I ran a backtest, and the results are surprising. Suppose at the beginning of 2000 you had $10,000 and invested it separately in gold and the S&P 500 index, holding until 2025. Guess which one won?

Final results:
Gold: $126,596
S&P 500: $77,495

Gold actually beat US stocks by over $60,000! This might overturn a lot of people’s assumptions.

But don’t jump to conclusions yet—there are three key factors behind this:

The starting line determines half the outcome. The year 2000 was the peak of the dot-com bubble, with the Nasdaq soaring to 5,000 and tech stock valuations at absurd levels. What about gold? It was around $280 per ounce at a twenty-year low. One was standing at the mountaintop, the other crouching in the valley—is this a fair match?

Gold’s safe-haven value shines in times of crisis. Between 2000 and 2012, the stock market was halved twice: the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis. If you look at the charts, every time the stock market plummeted, gold not only held steady but actually rose against the trend. During the 2008 financial crisis, many people preserved their wealth thanks to gold.

The power of compounding is underestimated. Although US stocks started a bull run after 2012, gold’s early advantage combined with steady growth allowed it to maintain its lead in the end.

What does this chart try to tell you? It’s not to encourage you to go all-in on gold like a gambler. The real lesson is: don’t blindly believe in any single asset. There are no eternal winners in the market—diversification is the key to long-term survival. When stock valuations are too high or the economy faces uncertainty, allocating some gold might help you sleep better at night.