Has Gold’s ‘Bubble’ Burst Or Is This Another Golden Opportunity?

With the end of the second quarter it is important to take stock and review how various assets have performed in the first half of 2013 and assess the outlook for the rest of 2013 and, more importantly, the coming years.

Global stock, bond, commodity and precious metal markets have been highly volatile since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke again suggested that the Fed would soon cut the pace of its highly unorthodox money printing and bond buying.

Gold and particularly silver had a torrid quarter and have significantly underperformed the vast majority of equity and bond markets in the quarter and in the last six months.
Markets were volatile prior to Bernanke’s “jawboning”, particularly after the Bank of Japan said it would boost the monetary base by ¥60 trillion to ¥70 trillion ($600 billion or $700 billion) annually. This led to record gold prices in Japanese yen in April prior to a series of mini Nikkei crashes and gold falling sharply in all currencies.