Last Friday, all three major stock markets hit new record highs ignoring the storm clouds on the horizon. In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said this reminds him of 1987.
The stock market is rising despite the fact that there are very, very negative factors that are building, that are hiding in plain sight, that everybody is ignoring.”
When it comes to the economy, most people aren’t worried about anything when there is everything to worry about.
If you believe the conventional wisdom, gold should be languishing right now.
It isn’t. People are buying gold.
So, what gives? Could it be that the conventional wisdom is wrong?
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.
Ding.
They say bells never ring when markets hit the top. But maybe they do and people just don’t listen.
Yesterday, Bloomberg reported China may slow or even stop its purchase of US Treasuries. In other words, a major source of US government debt financing may be pulling out. This comes at the same time the Federal Reserve has committed to shrinking its balance sheet.
In the weeks leading up to the December Federal Reserve rate hike, the price of gold fell and most mainstream analysts were bearish on the yellow metal. After all, rising interest rates are bad for gold. right? But we took a contrarian position, saying the negative relationship between rising interest rates and the price of gold is really more of a “sell the rumor, buy the fact” phenomenon.
As it turns out, we were right. In the weeks since the Federal Open Market Committee nudged the interest rate up another 25 basis points on Dec. 13, gold has outperformed most other major assets.
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.
Janet Yellen and company pretty much followed the script during last week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, raising interest rates another .25 percent and signaling three rate hikes in 2018.
We tend to focus primarily on Federal Reserve actions, but it’s important to remember the Fed isn’t the only central bank game in town. While it nudges interest rates slowly upward, the European Central Bank is standing pat on economic stimulus. And there’s no indication that is going to change in the near future.
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.
The December Federal Open Market Committee meeting went pretty much according to scrip.
Analysts widely expected the Fed to raise rates by .25. It did. Analysts also expected the Fed to signal three more hikes in 2018. It did that too.
Gold went up, as we said it probably would, hitting a one-week high in the wake of the rate hike as investors “bought the fact.”
The Federal Reserve is widely expected to nudge interest rates up again this week. Most analysts agree that the specter of a rate hike is one of the primary reasons gold has slumped over the last several weeks. But are rising interests rates really bad for gold?
The short answer is no. At least not historically
