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Gold really fascinates, and divides, investing/commentariat/Bitcoin communities.
Its recent ATH draws all the eyes to it; the physical fervor/backlog-at-the-BoE (#889502, #896492) making that even more newsworthy.
Here's Mr. Guthrie in the FT, a magazine already on Trump tilt (#890832), explaining how actually it's Trump's chaotic derangements that have propelled gold upwards
Lurking in the background, is a suspicion that the world could descend into chaos. ... [Gold] has recently shown that it can rise in anticipation of destructive events, counterbalancing any portfolio losses on equities.
Gold fans think the metal is worth holding because humans have treasured it for millennia. They often distrust money created by central and commercial banks. They sometimes characterise gold as “a hedge against inflation,” though this is disputable.
This Lindy effect of humans treasuring gold for millennia sounds really cool but never really resonated much with me. Yes, and? Human behavior in, say, Mesopotamia doesn't seem to carry any direct lineage/meaning to today — certainly not when that history, via thousands of years of monetary meh and a classical gold standard separated by a century of fiat, is so far off.

We're in a digital, financialized world now. Who cares?

Trump craziness has not yet turned me into a gold bug. But I have become gold curious. Low-probability events, including a US debt crisis and attempts to overthrow US democracy, have moved up the long tail of risks. The relative political and economic stability that stretched from the mid-nineties to the late noughties now seems like a historic blip. Many central banks ran down their gold reserves then.
Central bankers have gone back to seeing gold as a reserve asset that supports economic confidence during crises. That helps explain a 90 per cent price rise since the Covid outbreak started in earnest. Gold is also harder for enemies to expropriate than foreign currency reserves deposited or traded overseas.
That last bit is cool, but comes with its counterpart of difficulty in using, which Russia learned to its detriment a few years ago: nobody can seize or freeze it, but you're having a hard time using it (what, you gonna ship gold bars to China or the Middle East? Or financialize it, but who's gonna repo it for you?)
While gold investments don't have any good avenues (ranging from custodial ETFs to custodial bullion to custodial shares in gold miners), peeps are taking self-custody:
You could alternatively go the whole hog and pay a premium for coins or ingots to own directly. Surprising numbers of retail investors do. Their purchases accounted for a quarter of total demand of 4,553 tonnes last year reported by the WGC, ahead of central banks. You would then have to store your loot without attracting the attention of thieves.

Yes, but all most of us can buy is IOU paper gold.
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...or pay premium for coins/ingots
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Indian women hold 11% of world's total physical gold, so it's nonsense to call it Trump put. 😜
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well, they're not trading it so they're irrelevant to the market price set at the margin
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This is ok but they are true holders of a Gold Standard. We can never call them irrelevant. Also their buying Gold is at at record highs.
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My understanding is that Indian women do fairly regularly make gold purchases and sales. Their jewelry truly functioning as a financial asset.
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Small fish, and as far as I understand, pretty price insensitive.
So no, I'd rather look at the central banks and major banks and billion dealer activities
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From my understanding, it is bought and sold. So it is more like a revolving door, they arent actually accumulating it.
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China has won the trade war It is now progressing logically to provision a global empire of military, monetary and other protocol and institutional hegemony which always follows from dominance in trade. Trump reacting to this. His attempt to break the bond that has established between Russia and China, a bond based on mutual interest and ambitions of expansion - China buys Russias oil and pays for it outside of the USD/SWIFT petrodollar hegemony. China has demonstrated that is can provision sufficient manufactured goods and trade apyments separate from USD/SWIFT hegemony to sustain Russia and Iran who both attack the west and its allies in an ongoing proxy war between ultimately, China and the USA. In this context the rise of gold as a hedge is logical. The prospects for Bitcoin are less certain than gold- if US hegemony declines Bitcoin could still be a valuable alternative SoV and MoE to USD and Chinas Yuan, but Chinas apparent hostility to Bitcoin may also adversely affect its utility in a world where Chinas sphere of influence looks like rapidly increasing as US hegemony declines.
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Gold will always be worth something. Did they ever say anything about Trumps Fort Knox audit?
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WAITING FOR IT.
Yeah, where's the televised show?!
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It didnt even happen yet?
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Ft Knox is EMPTY
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I haven't seen anything. (Maybe I missed it?)
My best guess is that it was funny for a few news cycles but now we've all moved on
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