Gordon Brown Gold Sale Explained: How the UK Lost £37 Billion Selling the Bottom
The 1999 Gold Sale That Became One of Britain’s Worst Trades in History
With Gold in full beast mode lately, I thought now’s a good time to revisit a classic…
One of the worst trades in UK history.
7th May 1999
Gordon Brown. Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, proudly announces he’s about to sell off a chunk of the UK’s gold reserves.
Publicly.
Like… actually tells the market he’s going to be a big seller. 
I imagine hedge funds nearly choked on their cigars before shorting the sh1t out of it.
GOLD SELLING MASTERCLASS
Can you spot the exact moment he made the announcement on the chart? 
Anyway, over the next few years, he sold 395 metric tonnes of Gold and patted himself on the back for raising £2.16 billion.
Today, that gold would be worth about £40 billion.
So that’s a cool £37 billion of missed upside.
(Which, funnily enough, would fill the £20bn hole Rachel Reeves says we need to plug… and still leave £17bn spare for a cheeky tax cut for traders…)
So next time you accidentally sell the low?
At least you didn’t tell the whole market first and leave £40 billion on the table. 
PS: Maybe I’m being harsh on him…
Sure, he couldn’t have known gold was about to enter a multi-decade bull run.
But announcing it to the market like that? Come on. That’s a schoolboy error.
Even Instagram traders know you don’t tell the market you’re about to dump size. 