This week’s downside breakout in the T-Bond futures market and the associated rise in the T-Bond yield has prompted us to re-visit the relationship between gold and interest rates. In the process of doing so we’ll address the question: are rising interest rates bullish or bearish for gold?

We’ll begin by noting what happened to nominal interest rates during the long-term gold bull markets of the past 100 years. Interest rates generally trended downward during the gold bull market of the 1930s, upward during the gold bull market of the 1960s and 1970s, and downward during the first 10 years of the current bull market. Therefore, history’s message is that the trend in the nominal interest rate does NOT determine gold’s long-term price trend.