Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said on Nov. 9 that gold is headed lower and bitcoin will keep gaining on it, even as bitcoin trails the metal since last week’s U.S. midterm elections.
“Gold Is Going Down”
Wood’s main argument is statistical. She said bitcoin’s correlation with gold has been just 0.1 since 2019, meaning the two assets largely ignore each other. A correlation of 1 would mean they move in lockstep. Wood also said bitcoin will keep gaining on gold because it “marches to its own beat.”
A Repeat of Her September Call
This is not a new position for Wood. In September, she told viewers of Ark’s “In The Know” series that bitcoin had “miles to go” against gold and described it as “both a risk-off and a risk-on asset.” At the time, bitcoin traded near $78,008 and spot gold sat near $4,377 an ounce. Over the trailing year, gold had gained 20% while bitcoin had lost 28%.
Since then, the ratio has barely budged. With bitcoin at about $74,700 and gold at about $4,141, one bitcoin now buys about 18.1 ounces of gold, compared with roughly 17.8 ounces in mid-September.
Gold’s Rough Year
Wood is betting against a metal that has already taken heavy damage. Gold hit a record of $5,110.50 on Jan. 26 and then fell to about $3,986 on Oct. 23, a drop of roughly 22%, Bitcoin.com News reported.
Both assets have disappointed. As of late last month, bitcoin was down 7.3% and gold 7.5% for the year, making them 2026’s worst-performing major assets, according to Creative Planning’s Charlie Bilello. HSBC has also warned that gold is losing its status as a short-term volatility hedge, because leveraged traders are forced to sell it when stocks fall. The bank remains bullish over the long term, pointing to central bank buying and ETF inflows.
Gold Bugs Are Not Buying It
The short-term data is working against Wood. Gold rose about 1.7% yesterday to settle at $4,141.14 an ounce, while oil prices slid and the dollar weakened. Bitcoin briefly dropped to $73,700 as more than $1 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated.
Longtime gold advocate Peter Schiff pointed to that split and said U.S. stocks were basically flat since the midterms. Bitcoin is down more than 4%, while gold is up more than 5%, silver is up almost 7%, and gold mining stocks are up more than 18%. “This is a sign of things to come,” Schiff wrote.
The next catalyst is Tuesday’s U.S. consumer price index (CPI) report. Higher interest rates can weigh on both gold and bitcoin, since neither pays a yield, and traders are already pricing a likely December hike from the Federal Reserve. A hot inflation print would test Wood’s call that gold breaks first. Bitcoin heads into the report on shaky footing after it closed below its 50-week moving average, ending a seven-week streak of closes above it.
