What a difference a few years makes. Back in the summer of 2015, a WSJ op-ed writer, who somehow was unaware of the past 6,000 years of human history, infamously and embarrassingly said "Let’s Be Honest About Gold: It’s a Pet Rock."
Fast forward to today, when with every central bank once again rushing
to debase its currency in what increasingly appears to be the final race
to the debasement bottom, when even BOE head Mark Carney recommends
that it is time to retire the dollar as the world's reserve currency, pet rock gold has emerged as the second best performing asset of the year... and at the rate it is going -4th in 2017, 3rd in 2018, 2nd in 2019 - gold will be the standout asset class of 2020.
Which naturally has sparked comparisons for gold's performance in
2019 with 2008+, when gold exploded higher as the financial system
nearly collapsed and central banks started injecting trillions in
liquidity into the system to keep it afloat.
Are such comparisons appropriate?
As Bank of America writes in "anatomy of two gold bull markets", in comparing the gold bull markets in 2008 and 2018, real rates remain key price drivers,
while a critical difference in market dynamics - this time around - is
that central banks have been unable to reflate global economies and
even as metrics like the value and proportion of negative yielding
assets has been increasing, further easing is on the cards. Linked to
that, Bank of America makes a stunning admissions: "the risk of quantitative failure, which was not a concern in 2008, makes gold an attractive asset."
Taking a step back, for those who have not been following the
performance of gold in the past year, the yellow metal has been one of
the best performing commodities over the past year, rallying by 31%
since bottoming in August 2018, as whon in the first chart which
highlights that recent price dynamics have to some extent mirrored those
seen in 2008+; the data also shows that the current bull market is
still young. Partially because of that, Bank of America notes that it
has been frequently been asked how the current macro backdrop compares
to dynamics 10 years ago.
So what sparked the tremendous 2008 rally which lasted for the next three years?
では２００８年の素晴らしいラリーは何が原因だったのだろう、しかもその後三年も続いた。
Looking back at the Great Financial Crisis, central banks reacted to
the turmoil on financial markets by easing monetary policy through both
traditional, but increasingly also non-traditional policy tools
Since gold is a non-yielding asset, the reduction in opportunity
costs and uncertainty over where the global economy and markets were
headed made the commodity an interesting investment.
This is shown in Chart 4, which suggests that sharp declines in US real rates post GFC were accompanied by steady increases in gold quotations. Yet,
US rates then started to change direction in 2013, the year Fed
chairman Ben Bernanke caused the taper tantrum announcing that the Fed
would gradually reduce its bond purchases (Chart 5). This effectively
put an end to gold increases.
この状況はChart 4に示される、GFC後の米国実質金利が急落しそれにともな０１３いゴールド相場が安定して上昇している。しかし２０１３年に米国金利がその動きを変えた、この年FED議長 Ben Bernankeがtaper tantrumを引き起こしたのだ、FEDが徐々に債権買取を減らすと宣言した（Chart 5)．これが実質的にゴールド上昇に終わりを告げた。
After the gold price rally ended, and fell sharply in the wake of the
taper tantrum, gold prices then remained subdued also because ongoing
monetary policy support kept markets buoyant. This is shown in chart 6, which highlights that falling volatility was ultimately accompanied by lower gold quotations.
Of course, this was also influenced by an acceleration of the US
economy, which picked up post GFC and in 2015 printed some of the
highest growth rates in a decade
Unfortunately, the central banks' fairy tale did not last, and the
"strong economic growth" came with a significant wrinkle: inflation
remained well below the 2% target. The chart shows data for the US, but
the lack of upward pressure on general price levels has been equally
pronounced in other countries/ regions including Japan/ Europe.
Yet notwithstanding the ongoing lack of reflation, central banks
around the world seem adamant that monetary easing will ultimately do
the job - as in it didn't work last time, but it will work this time, we
promise - and hence expectations are for more stimulus. The
side-effects of that are mirrored by Chart 8 and Chart 9: value
and proportion of debt with negative yields has risen almost
exponentially of late and this has been a powerful driver of the gold.
This, according to BofA commodity strategists, has various
implications. Most notably, "ultra-easy monetary policies have led to
distortions across various asset classes"; worse - and these are not our
words, but of Bank of America - "it also stopped normal economic
adjustment/ renewal mechanisms by for instance sustaining economic
participants that would normally have gone out of business", i.e. a
record number of zombie corporations.
In addition, as everyone knows, debt levels have continued to
increase, making it more difficult for central banks to normalize
monetary policy as 2018 showed so vividly (and for Powell, painfully).
Which brings us to BofA's conclusion: "We fear that this
dynamic could ultimately lead to "quantitative failure", under which
markets refocus on those elevated liabilities and the lack of global
growth, which would in all likelihood lead to a material increase in
volatility." こういう状況でBoAはこう結論づける：「この力学が「量的失策」となることを恐れている、市場は再度債務増加と世界的成長欠如に注目している、これはボラティリティを大きく増やすことだろう。」
How does gold fall into this: "At the same time, and perhaps
perversely, such a sell-off may prompt central banks to ease more
aggressively, making gold an even more attractive asset to hold." この状況でゴールドはどうなるだろう：「それと同時に、たぶん株式下落を見て中央銀行にさらなる緩和を督促するかもしれない、こうなるとゴールドは更に魅力をますことになる。」
In other words, as the world approaches the financial endgame and
central banks are out of ammo beside just doing more of the same - that
led the world to the current catastrophic state - gold will be the
biggest beneficiary of the upcoming financial cataclysm. And, no, this
is not some fringe blog predicting the apocalypse, this is the
prediction of one the 4 largest US banks.
多量のオピオイドを米国に送り込み、米国で深刻な麻薬中毒問題を引き起こしています。現代版「阿片戦争」です。あのトヨタ初の女性取締役もオピオイド中毒で逮捕解任されましたよね。 US Is Dependent On China For Almost 80% Of Its Medicine by Tyler Durden Fri, 05/31/2019 - 12:55 Experts are warning that the U.S. has become way too reliant on China for all our medicine , our pain killers, antibiotics, vitamins, aspirin and many cancer treatment medicine. 専門家はこう警告する、米国はすべての医薬品、痛み止め、抗生物質、ビタミン、アスピリン、各種抗がん剤で、中国依存度が高すぎる。 Fox Business reports that according to FDA estimates at least 80 percent of active ingredients found in all of America’s medicine come from abroad, primarily from China . And it’s not just the ingredients, China wants to become the world’s dominant generic drug maker. So far Chinese companies are making generic for everything from high blood pressure to chemotherapy drugs. 90 percent of America’s prescriptions a...
日本と同じくPOMOになる公算が大きいとは思いますが、どうでしょうね。 米国大統領選挙の勝者と１１月投票日前数ヶ月の株価の動向には９割以上の相関があります。はっきり言えば、公約とか主義主張には無関係です :) 。この時期株価を維持・上昇すると現職政党勝利、株価が下落すると挑戦政党勝利となります。熱心な民主党員活動家である前FED議長イエレンは頻繁に口先介入をしましたが、量的緩和再開まで踏み込めず、４年前の秋に株価が下落し、トランプ勝利となりました。株価と大統領選挙の相関をトランプは熟知しています、４年前には株価が下落するようしきりと口先介入していました。今年は１１月まで株価を維持できるかどうか？どうでしょう。 Mark Your Calendar: Next Week The Fed's Liquidity Drain Begins by Tyler Durden Fri, 01/03/2020 - 14:54 What goes up, must come down, at least in theory. 上昇があれば、その後に下落が伴う、少なくとも理論上ではそうだ。 Ever since the start of October when the Fed launched QE4 - or as some still call it "Not QE" - in response to the Sept repo crisis, figuring out the market has been pretty simple: if the Fed's balance sheet goes up so does the S&P500, and vice versa. １０月にFEDがQE4を始めて以来ーー「Not QE」という人もいるがーー９月のレポ危機に対応したものだが、相場はとても単純になった：FEDがバランス...
先週の記事です。最後の２段落だけ訳をいれておきます。 Gold’s Peculiar Surge Adam Hamilton February 21, 2020 3246 Words Gold is enjoying an awesome week, surging back above $1600 for the first time in nearly 7 years! That big round psychologically-heavy level is really catching traders’ attention, great improving sentiment. Yet this recent gold surge has proven peculiar. Unlike normal rallies, the buying driving this one largely hasn’t come from gold’s usual primary drivers. The stealth buying behind this surge may impair its staying power. This Tuesday gold surged 1.2% higher to close near $1602. It hadn’t crested $1600 on close since way back in late March 2013 fully 6.9 years ago! Long-time gold traders shudder at the dark spring which followed. Within less than several weeks after that last $1600+ close, gold plummeted 16.2%. Most of that came in ...
What Could Go Wrong? The Fed's Warns On Corporate Debt by Tyler Durden Thu, 05/09/2019 - 11:44 Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, “So, if the housing market isn’t going to affect the economy, and low interest rates are now a permanent fixture in our society, and there is NO risk in doing anything because we can financially engineer our way out it – then why are all these companies building up departments betting on what could be the biggest crash the world has ever seen? What is more evident is what isn’t being said. Banks aren’t saying “we are gearing up just in case something bad happens.” Quite the contrary – they are gearing up for WHEN it happens. When the turn does come, it will be unlike anything we have ever seen before. The scale of it could be considerable because of the size of some...
