$50,000 Gold? Billionaire investor Thomas Kaplan thinks so

Billionaire investor Thomas Kaplan has issued an eye-popping gold price forecast of $50,000.

In an interview on Kitco News, Kaplan said, "Seeing gold go up another tenfold from here, to me, is not just likely, but inevitable."

"I can see gold going to 30, 40, 50,000 dollars without a problem."

Kaplan serves as the chairman and CIO of The Electrum Group, an advisory and asset management firm focusing on natural resources. The company has roughly $2.5 billion in assets under management.

Kaplan is also the largest private collector of Rembrandt’s art.

While making a bold price forecast, Kaplan didn’t put a timeline on the rally. However, he said we are in “what will be seen to be a very, very long wave in gold and silver, that we will see more highs in both.”

Kaplan wasn’t willing to speculate on the near-term, saying we may or may not have hit the bottom in the recent correction.

“Maybe it already is, maybe it needs to test again, I don't know.”

But he insisted it doesn’t matter.

“Because in the long term, even in the medium term, gold and silver are going to multiply from where they are."

Kaplan emphasized that his strategy involves holding things for the long term.

“People try to be too clever. And one of the reasons why I do hold things for so long is because, I just say to myself, I’m going to be patient. So long as they are still the best assets in their class, I’ll hold it forever, and I will not be distracted by noise.”

Kaplan pivoted into gold and silver in 2007 after selling his family’s energy company. At the time, gold was hovering around $550 to $600 per ounce.

“My view was that the place to protect my wealth, my family’s wealth, when we sold our energy company, which was our biggest asset and our biggest ‘killing,’ as it were, was gold and silver.”

Why gold and silver?

"I'd entered 2007 with a view that things were just simply too good, not dissimilar to the way things are right now in certain respects. And that there was just too much bullishness in asset classes."

At the time, Kaplan predicted gold would move from that $500 range to between $3,000 and $5,000. He said he thought it would hit $5,000 and then possibly fall back to $3,000 before recovering to $5,000 and climbing again.

Kaplan compared the recent correction to a “1987 moment” when the stock market crashed, before recovering to new highs. It was essentially a correction inside a bull market.

He pointed out that the 36 percent crash on Black Friday “really did seem like the world was falling in upon itself.”

“And yet when you look back over that chart, you can't see it. Certainly, a person of my vintage would need glasses to be able to perceive it. It's that minute."

Notably, the man who pivoted to gold and silver, effectively getting out of the markets right before the 2008 crash, thinks that today’s environment has a similar look.