I love exploring data to try and understand complex situations. My career has mainly been in finance giving rise to the name: Exploring Finance. Using data to explore the current financial landscape shows an unsustainable situation, which has led me to identify gold and silver as the best defensive investments.
After losing its grip in 2020, managed money is back in the driver’s seat pushing the price of gold and silver around. This analysis is written to explain the short-term price movements, which can be confounding given the strong fundamental backdrop. After very low volatility and a disappointing year in precious metals, it’s likely activity will pick up in 2022. Tracking the positioning of managed money will provide insights into the short-term price moves.
As 2021 goes into the history books, Peter Schiff looks back over what he calls “a year of peak speculation.”
Of course, the big story of the year was inflation.
As reported last week, Comex January’s open interest activity was looking strong in silver and modest in gold. The initial results are promising, especially given the probability contracts will open mid-month for immediate delivery.
This analysis focuses on gold and silver physical delivery on the Comex. See the article What is the Comex for more detail.
While on the surface, it appears the Federal Reserve asset purchase taper has started, it’s not as easy to prove when you dig into the details.
The Fed is certainly not being as aggressive as they promised, and for good reason. As the Fed leaves the bond market, who will fill the gap? Since 2019, the Fed has quadrupled the Treasury purchases of international holders and has been one of the biggest players in the Treasury market.
We’re on the cusp of a new year. We certainly had a wild ride in 2021 with continuing coronavirus drama, inflation that turned out to be not so transitory, and a record-breaking stock market bubble. So, what was the biggest story of 2021? Friday Gold Wrap host Mike Maharrey thinks it was a story that wasn’t told – the story of real interest rates. He wraps up the year by telling that story.
Gold may be the key to finding space aliens!
After years of development, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched into space on Christmas day.
Despite talk about a war on inflation and a quantitative easing taper, the money supply continues to expand at a rapid clip, fanning the inflationary fire.
M2 increased by $249.2B in November.
While the Federal Reserve talks about tightening monetary policy, the Chinese central bank is heading in the opposite direction. This could boost gold demand in that country even further.
Earlier this month, the People’s Bank of China announced a 0.5% cut in financial institutions’ required reserve ratio (RRR). According to the World Gold Council, this move will inject about $1.2 trillion yuan into the Chinese economy.
Silver delivery in December surged to levels not seen since last spring and reversed the downward trend in place since last summer.
This analysis focuses on gold and silver physical delivery on the Comex. See the article What is the Comex for more detail.