The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
Americans can turn pretty much anything into a “holiday.” Even a groundhog.
I guess Groundhog Day isn’t a holiday, strictly speaking. I mean, I don’t get a day off work. And the government doesn’t close. That’s when you know you have a real holiday. Government shuts down and my mailbox isn’t filled with inane fliers and bills. By that measure, Groundhog Day doesn’t qualify as a holiday.
But Americans still make a big deal out of the day. And there is drinking. Everybody knows a real holiday involves getting sloshed. And what better reason is there to drink than fretting over whether a rodent is going to predict 6 more weeks of winter? So, maybe it is a holiday – at least in the vein of St. Patrick’s Day.
Ten-year Treasury yields flirted with 3% this week, hitting a four-year high of 2.95. Does the Treasury yield hold the leash of the stock market?
Peter Schiff talked about it in an interview with Liz Claman on Fox Business, saying the Fed has kept rates artificially low for years, but given current conditions, it’s inevitable that the market will lift rates toward “normal.”
The result?
Gold is going to “go ballistic.”
During a podcast last month, Peter Schiff asked a key question: who is going to buy all of the debt necessary to finance the ballooning US deficit?
In his most recent analysis, Dan Kurtz at DK Analytics explores this question more in-depth and comes to generally the same conclusion.
The dollar has lost more than 8% of its value over the last year. That decline may accelerate as bond investors sell ahead of a huge expansion in Treasuries coming into the market. Interest rates will have to climb significantly. The price of bonds will drop. As Dan put it, where bonds go, stocks follow.
We’ve excerpted some key points from Dan’s report.
The stock market plunge earlier this month reminds us why we should buy gold. As a report released by the World Gold Council shows, gold acted as a portfolio hedge during the brief downturn. The price of gold rose as stocks sold off; as stocks partially retraced their losses, gold trended lower.
But gold’s effectiveness improves when market corrections are wider or sustained for longer. In our view, the recent selloff is a good reminder that gold can deliver returns and reduce risk in portfolios.”
This is some food for thought especially in light of the fact we are ripe for a 1987-style market crash.
The dollar has shown some resilience this week. The dollar index clawed back after hitting multi-year lows last week. Meanwhile, gold saw its worst single-day decline in more than a year on Tuesday.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the upward pressure on bond yields. In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff said he thinks this is the reason we’re still seeing some life in the dollar and downward pressure on gold.
The mainstream investment world is starting to worry about the federal debt.
Goldman Sachs sees a tidal wave of red ink — and it may drag the US economy into its undertow.”
Goldman recently released a note to clients saying virtually the same thing Peter Schiff has been saying for months. The US economy won’t likely get the promised economic growth out of GOP tax cuts – at least not over the long-haul.
Stock markets have settled down after an awful couple of weeks earlier this month. On Feb. 5, the Dow Jones suffered its largest-ever drop in terms of points. It was down 1,600 at one point and ultimately lost 1,175.21 points, a 4.6% drop that day. At one point during that week, the Dow was off 10% in correction territory. But everything is calm now and most of the mainstream is once again feeling bullish and optimistic.
Peter Schiff spoke at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference 2018 last month before the market tanked. But his message remains relevant in the aftermath of the plunge and the subsequent recovery because the dynamics in the market remain pretty much the same. Conditions are still ripe for a 1987-style market crash.
Investors have not been this optimistic…since 1987. They are even more optimistic than they were at the height of the technology bubble, the dot-com bubble, the new era. Of course, 1987 didn’t end well, right? We had a stock market crash, and there’s a lot about what’s happening today that reminds me about what was happening in ’87.”
We knew it was only a matter of time.
Uncle Sam has suddenly become very interested in Bitcoin.
Over the last several months, we’ve reported on various countries announcing plans to regulate cryptocurrencies. Now Congress is looking to get into the act.
SchiffGold has launched a new video series called “It’s Your Dime,” featuring “straight talk” interviews with movers and shakers in the world of precious metals, investing and economics.
In the pilot episode recorded Jan. 31, 2018, host Mike Maharrey chats with SchiffGold executive director and senior special metals specialist Jonathan Sosnay.
