Tag Archive: Gold
Gold: A use case for the modern era
Part I of II
For decades, physical gold investors have had to contend with superficial, naive and wholly ahistorical “arguments” from the mainstream financial press, from economists and experts of all stripes, claiming that gold is nothing but a barbarous relic. To them, the yellow metal is akin to investment superstition. It has no yield, it serves no practical purpose and the only attraction they could conceive of is merely symbolic, or...
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Weekly Market Pulse: Welcome Back To The Old Normal
Stagflation. It’s a word that strikes fear in the hearts of investors, one that evokes memories – for some of us – of bell bottoms, disco, and Jimmy Carter’s American malaise. The combination of weak growth and high inflation is the worst of all worlds, one that required a transformational leader and a cigar-chomping central banker to defeat the last time it came around.
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Is Switzerland still a safe jurisdiction for precious metals investors?
Over the last two years, we’ve all witnessed state abuses of power and extreme overreaches the likes of which many average citizens had never imagined they’d see in their own lifetimes. This caused a great part of the body politic in many Western nations to revisit their previously held beliefs about what is and isn’t possible for their governments to do and to question whether there really is such a thing as going “too far” or whether anyone in...
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Greenback Starts New Week on Firm Note
Overview: With many financial centers, especially in Europe, closed for the long holiday weekend, risk-appetites remain in check. Most Asia Pacific markets fell, and poor earnings from Infosys and Tata Consultancy, saw India pace the decline with a 2% drop. US futures are also trading with a heavier bias.
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Russia’s “gold peg”: Lessons for Western investors
It is undeniable that the ongoing crisis in Ukraine has polarized Western societies to an extent unseen in decades in any other foreign conflict. For over a month, we have been bombarded unceasingly by all mainstream media sources with reports and stories about Russia’s invasion and this conflict has already created deep social rifts in many other nations, and EU members in particular.
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Weekly Market Pulse: What Now?
The yield curve inverted last week. Well, the part everyone watches, the 10 year/2 year Treasury yield spread, inverted, closing the week a solid 7 basis points in the negative. The difference between the 10 year and 2 year Treasury yields is not the yield curve though. The 10/2 spread is one point on the Treasury yield curve which is positively sloped from 1 month to 3 years, negatively sloped from 3 years to 10 years and positively sloped again...
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Weekly Market Pulse: The Cure For High Prices
There’s an old Wall Street maxim that the cure for high commodity prices is high commodity prices. As prices rise two things will generally limit the scope of the increase. Demand will wane as consumers just use less or find substitutes. Supply will also increase as the companies that extract these raw materials open new mines, grow more crops or drill new wells.
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Ukraine conflict: A dispassionate analysis
I realize that I shouldn’t be surprised at the way the crisis in Ukraine has divided our societies or at the blind fanaticism the conversations around it have provoked. After all, virtually every other development of consequence has tuned out exactly the same. From covid to the economy and from freedom of speech to science itself, rational, respectful and productive debates are nowhere to be found.
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Is gold too expensive?
Over the last couple of years we witnessed quite an extraordinary ride in gold prices. An impressive ascent until the last quarter of 2020 was followed by a pullback that scared many speculators away, which in turn transformed into a period of strength and then came another ebb… And recently, once again, we saw the yellow metal shoot up, fueled by inflation fears and the situation in Ukraine. Given that the fundamentals remain unchanged and that...
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Weekly Market Pulse: Is This A Bear Market?
I don’t know the answer to the question posed in the title. No one does because the future is not predictable. I don’t know what will happen in Ukraine. I don’t know how much what has already happened there – and what might – matters to the US and global economy. I don’t know if the Fed is making a mistake by (likely) hiking interest rates by an entire 1/4 of 1% this week.
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Expect the Unexpected from the Fed
2022-04-28
by Stephen Flood
2022-04-28
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