Gold mining shares experienced a decade long bull market between 2001 and 2011 which saw the HUI (Gold Bugs Index) rise more than 18x:
HUI (Gold Bugs Index)
The salad days of 2011 are long gone for the gold mining sector. Since the 2011 peak the HUI has fallen more than 80% and as of today’s close the index is back to its lows from 2003, just before the metals bull market kicked into high gear. This is a perfect illustration of market cycles; it took more than a decade for the bull to run its course and it took less than four years for the market to take it all back.