The August Trade Deficit fell for a fifth straight month to -$67.4B. The Deficit is now down an 37% from the high struck back in March.
As shown by the chart below, this is mainly driven by a fall in Imports as Exports have stayed relatively flat.
Gold demand in India was healthy in September and the outlook is strong moving forward.
Healthy retail demand in September drove the local price briefly into a premium of $2 to $3 per ounce early in the month. It was the first time gold had been in premium since May.
Is now the time to buy gold? Or should we be bearish on the precious metal? Peter Schiff debated TD Securities Global Head of Commodity Markets Strategy Bart Melek on the future of gold prices on CNBC Asia.
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.
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.
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.
Given historically high inflation, why haven’t we seen a big rally in gold and silver?
There are a number of factors that have weighed on precious metals, but as the World Gold Council points out, it’s important to put gold and silver’s recent price movements in a broader perspective.
In fact, gold has been one of the better-performing asset classes in 2022.
