Buyers of Gold vs. Buyers of Silver
Wow! What a week for dollar! It dropped a whole milligram from 23.2 to 22.2mg gold. The dollar is now at its lowest level in years, and on the verge of breaking down.
Silver, the precious metal of the common man [PT]
Silver Price Driven by Reservation Demand
The price of gold went up a buck last week, but the price of silver dropped back 13 cents. And the gold-silver ratio marches further upwards.
Keith spoke at a conference this week, about how to analyze the fundamentals of supply and demand in gold and silver. He talked about the basis of course.
Silver coins – silver prices are partly influenced by an industrial demand component, but the fact that they move most of the time with the price of gold indicates that the main price driver remains reservation demand by investors. [PT]
Lira Comeback?
The price of gold jumped 35 bucks last week, and that of silver 48 cents. The dollar is now down to 23 milligrams of gold.
Keith is on the road this week, so we will just comment on one thing. If Italy is serious about moving back to the lira, that will make the euro less sound (to say nothing of the lira). That will drive people mostly to the dollar, but also to gold.
Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini (as the leader of the Lega party he is actually the most powerful politician in Italy, despite not being prime minister). In the course of an escalating dispute with the European Commission over the country’s budget deficit and debt, he threatened that Italy would consider introducing a parallel currency in the form of so-called “mini-BOTs” – non-interest bearing Italian treasury notes which the Italian state would print and accept in payment. Not quite a return to the lira yet, as mini-BOTs would actually be denominated in euro, but they would certainly represent a lira-in-waiting. The people who have come up with the idea apparently believe that such a scheme would be in compliance with EU/ euro zone regulations. We are not so sure about that, but ultimately Brussels would not really be able to do much about it. No-one seems to be taking the threat seriously at the moment, but if the Italian government were to go through with it, it would undoubtedly undermine the euro. [PT]
Is Silver Still Useful as a Monetary Metal?
The price of gold jumped a whole twenty bucks last week. We imagine that the marginal gold bug is relieved to be rid of his gold, in this opportunity afforded by the highest price since early April. OK, all kidding aside, the price of silver went up a penny.
The gold-silver ratio keeps hitting new highs recently (this is actually a long-term trend, frequently interrupted by strong rallies of silver against gold). Is silver losing its usefulness as a monetary metal? [PT]
The Money of the Free Market, not of Governments
Monday was Memorial Day holiday in America. Last week the price of gold rose 8 bucks, and silver 16 cents. With Keith traveling in Asia right now, this will be a brief report. But speaking of Asia, everyone seems to be talking about China’s (and other countries, such as Russia) accumulation of gold.
Accumulation of gold reserves over the past decade by various emerging market central banks (from the new Incrementum In Gold We Trust 2019 Report) [PT]
The Seeds of the Next Bust Are Closer to Sprouting
The price of gold was up this week, by $10 and that of silver by ¢6. Something is brewing in the fundamentals that we haven’t seen since… last year. We will show a picture of this, below.
There are many problems with assuming a rising stock market means a growing economy. We’ve written many times about the much-greater growth of debt, i.e., borrowing to consume, which adds to GDP.
S&P 500 Index, monthly – the huge rally since 2009 was accompanied by the weakest economic recovery of the post-WW2 era. Evidently, the stock market does not necessarily reflect economic growth. Very often numerous other factors prove to be far more important drivers of stock prices. A pertinent example is Venezuela’s soaring stock market, which is up by 88,500% in the past year alone (this is not a typo). Meanwhile, the country’s economy is contracting since 2014, with the slump accelerating to a stunning -16.5% y/y in both 2017 and 2018. The S&P 500 Index is an island of sanity by comparison, at least superficially (the ceteris are of course not paribus). [PT]
Coffee, Milk and Gold
Last week was holiday-shorted due to Good Friday (it’s not an official holiday in the US, but it is in the UK. And this week’s report is a day late due to Easter Monday). The price of gold dropped $15, but the price of silver rose ¢4. Perhaps silver traders got word that we are paying interest on silver, which gives people a reason to hold silver? J
A silver bar plus interest… [PT]
Is Silver Hard of Hearing?
The price of gold inched down, but the price of silver footed down (if we may be permitted a little humor that may not make sense to metric system people). For the gold-silver ratio to be this high, it means one of two things. It could be that speculators are avoiding the monetary metals and metal stackers are depressed. Or that something is going on in the economy, to drive demand for the metals in different directions.
As a rule the gold silver ratio acts as a proxy for credit spreads – this is attributable to the fact that silver prices are partly driven by the metal’s large industrial demand component (by contrast, the vast bulk of gold demand consists of monetary or investment demand; industrial and fabrication demand in the gold market are negligible by comparison). In the chart above we compare the gold-silver ratio to the IEF-JNK ratio, which serves as a proxy for corporate credit spreads (note: “unadjusted” means that only prices are compared, not total returns – interest payments received by holders of IEF and JNK are not included). An interesting divergence has emerged since the 2014-2016 oil patch mini-bust – while the gold-silver ratio is streaking to new highs, the IEF-JNK ratio has established a lower high in late 2018. We believe this is mainly due to the massive distortion of credit markets in the wake of the QE and ZIRP/NIRP policies pursued by the world’s largest central banks. One of these markets is wrong and it is a good bet that the market that has been manipulated by central bank interventions is the one that is giving a false signal. [PT]
A Worrisome Trend
If you read gold analysis much, you will come across two ideas. One, inflation so-called (rising consumer prices) is not only running much higher than the official statistic, but is about to really start skyrocketing. Two, buy gold because gold will hedge it. That is, the price of gold will go up as fast, or faster, than the price of gold.
CPI monthly since 1914, annualized rate of change. In recent years CPI was relatively tame despite a vast increase in the money supply. However, relative prices in the economy were massively distorted as a result of the latter – and this is driving ever larger boom-bust cycles. [PT]
Digital Asset Rush
The only part of our April Fools article yesterday that was not said with tongue firmly planted in cheek was the gold and silver price action (though framed it in the common dollar-centric parlance, being April Fools):
“Gold went down $21, while silver dropped about 1/3 of a dollar. Not quite a heavy metal brick in free fall, but close enough.”
Bitcoin, hourly – a sudden yen for BTC breaks out among the punters. [PT]
Keynesian Rot
The prices of the monetary metals rose $11 and ¢27 last week. The supply and demand fundamentals is the shortest section of this Report [ed note: we are excerpting the supply-demand section for Acting Man – readers interested in the other part of the report can find it here].
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 – prior to the cataclysmic event, numerous small earth quakes and steam venting from fissures warned that something big was about to happen, even if no-one suspected the actual magnitude of the outbreak. The eruption was so powerful that a fairly large chunk of the mountain went missing in the proceedings. There are always accidents waiting to happen out there somewhere, and the modern-day fiat money system is clearly one of them. There will be warning signals before it keels over – in fact, the final cataclysm usually happens fairly quickly, while the period that leads up to it tends to be a drawn-out affair. [PT]
The Week Ends with a Surprise
The weekly closing prices of the precious metals were up +$5 and +¢11. But this does not tell the full story of the trading action. Prices were dropping until Friday. More precisely, Friday 8am in New York, or 1pm in London.
Gold and silver – back in demand on Friday… [PT]
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