Gold prices shot up continuously between 2001 and 2013 in a rally that resembled a classic bubble. We had warned investors repeatedly not to “invest” in gold and only treat it as a social necessity that needs to be bought for specific social occasions. From a peak of 2013, gold has fallen by 50%, leading to large losses for those who believed that the world was coming to an end convinced themselves that gold is headed much higher.

However, even the diehard fans of gold must be ready to throw in the towel now, if they have already not done so. Here is a graphic that shows the waning interest in gold, from an academic paper titled The Financial Economics of Gold – A Survey by Fergal A. O’Connor and Brian M Lucey, both of Trinity College Dublin, Jonathan A. Batten of Monash University, Australia and Dirk G. Baur of Kühne Logistics University, Hamburg.

It shows the number of articles published annually in the Financial Times newspaper about gold between 2004 and 2014 from the FT Interactive Database. The total represents all articles filed under the topic Gold by the Financial Times editors, with the lighter portion showing the number filed under Topic: Gold as well as having gold in the title. Thus, the number under the topic gold was 401 in 2009 and 2012. Of those (53%) also had gold in the title. Just notice how the articles on gold are coming down from a peak reached around 2011.

The same is the story of academic studies on gold. Just as “investors” started getting interested in gold after the metal had rallied at a compound rate of 30% over 10 years, academic researchers were also drawn to the phenomenon. Studies on gold have been growing since it was allowed to float freely in the late 1960s, the volume of peer-reviewed papers published, leapt in 2010, after gold had rallied continuously for nine nears. It shot up again in 2013 as prices climaxed and crashed.