After adding a historically high amount of gold to reserves in the third quarter, central banks kicked off Q4 buying more gold.
According to data compiled by the World Gold Council, central banks globally added another 31 tons of gold to official reserves in October.
Peter Schiff recently appeared on Real America with Dan Ball to talk about the economy, energy prices, and inflation. Peter said if you think inflation was bad this year, wait until next year with a much weaker dollar.
Have you ever had a gut feeling that the labor reports put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are hinky?
If so, trust your gut.
According to the Democrats and many mainstream pundits, the US economy is “resilient.” As Laura Ingraham put it, “it’s all peaches and cream according to Joe and his team.”
But what’s the truth?
Peter Schiff painted a less rosy picture during his appearance on The Ingraham Angle, saying the coming currency crisis is going to fuel the inflationary fire.
While demand for physical gold and silver have been robust, managed money has dominated the market. So, is it buying this bull market?
Please note: the CoTs report was published 12/02/2022 for the period ending 11/29/2022. “Managed Money” and “Hedge Funds” are used interchangeably.
The Fed has a targeted balance sheet reduction of $95B a month. Up until this point, the Fed had failed to reach its target almost every month since QT began.
In the latest month, the Fed made up for their recent shortfall with a big balance sheet reduction of $139B, exceeding their target by 50%! Despite the larger-than-expected reduction, the Fed still missed its target on Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS).
According to the BLS, the economy added 263k jobs in November with a modest revision up in October from 261k to 284k but a revision down in September from 365k to 269k. October was a beat against median expectations of 200k. The employment rate (black line) stayed flat at 3.7% while the labor force participation ticked down from 62.2% to 62.1% This is the weakest labor force participation since December of last year.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell came out this week and indicated the central bank is set to pivot away from its aggressive rate hikes. But he couched the announcement in hawkish terms. The markets bought the pivot and ignored the hawkishness. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey puts Powell’s remarks in a broader context and speculates about what might be coming down the pike.
Inflation was running rampant for months before the Federal Reserve launched its inflation fight. As you’ll recall, we were told over and over again that inflation was transitory. But now that the central bank is on the job, most people are confident Powell and Company can get rising prices back under control.
Perhaps they shouldn’t be so confident.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell all but confirmed a soft pivot by the central bank in its inflation fight on Wednesday, while trying to maintain a hawkish demeanor.
The markets appear to be buying the pivot, but they are ignoring Powell’s “tough guy” spin.
