Managed Money continues to hammer the price of gold lower as the Net Short position increased to -43k contracts.
Please note: the CoTs report was published on 9/30/2022 for the period ending 9/27/2022. “Managed Money” and “Hedge Funds” are used interchangeably.
Central banks globally added to their net gold holdings for the fifth consecutive month in August, according to the latest data released by the World Gold Council.
On net, central banks added 20 more tons of gold to their reserves. Three banks drove buying in August and there were no notable sellers.
Last week, the Bank of England suddenly pivoted. It gave up its inflation fight to rescue its pension funds and bond market. What exactly happened? And what does it tell us about the Federal Reserve’s inflation fight? Peter Schiff explained it all on his podcast.
The Fed has found it easier to raise rates than shrink its balance sheet. September was supposed to be the month when the Fed got serious about shrinking the balance sheet. After a few months of warming up with $47.5B monthly reductions, the Fed was going to step up in September and shrink by $95B ($60B in Treasuries and $35B in MBS).
That didn’t happen.
With a hurricane barreling toward his home, Friday Gold Wrap podcast host Mike Maharrey called an audible and recorded this week’s show ahead of time. And since the hurricane is in the news, as well as top-of-mind for his family, he uses it as a jumping-off point to talk about some economics including the concept of “price gouging” and the “broken window fallacy. He also touches on dollar strength and how it’s impacting the gold and silver markets.
I typically start this analysis with gold, but the action in the platinum market is impossible to ignore. The next four charts should tell you everything you need to know.
First, similar to gold and silver, platinum has seen a much higher delivery volume since the pandemic struck in 2020.
Do you have silver in your portfolio?
You should!
According to research by Oxford Economics, investors would benefit from an average of 4 to 6 percent silver allocation within a diversified portfolio. This is far below the average investor’s exposure to silver.
If the Keynesians are right, Hurricane Ian will create an economic boom here in Florida. After all, breaking windows creates demand and that stimulates the economy. And after this massive hurricane cut through Florida, there were a lot of broken windows — and much worse.
Money Supply growth was barely positive in August at $2B and sits well below the $233B seen last year. As the chart below shows, Money Supply growth has collapsed since February. Last year started with five straight months above $200B, whereas 2022 has only seen one month above $100B and that was January.
This is starting to look a lot like the popping of the dot-com bubble with one big difference — inflation.
Beginning in mid-June, we saw a significant bear market rally in stocks. But the recent declines have wiped out those gains and more. For instance, the Dow jumped 14% during the 2-month rally. By the close on Friday, Sept. 23, it was once again down 20% from its all-time high. That same day, the NASDAQ closed just 2% off its June low after a 23% rally.
