Why should you own gold in your investment portfolio? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about some reasons to own gold, including its historical wealth-preserving qualities and its role as a safe haven. He also talks about a new buzzword central bankers and politicians are using to make inflation seem less bad.
The data over the last several months has been spot on in predicting the moves in gold and silver. November showed the market was in neutral, but then the December analysis correctly identified an impending move upward, and the January review concluded that gold may need a breather before moving higher.
So, what about this month?
Gold inventory in COMEX vaults declined by nearly 5% in a single month.
This analysis focuses on gold and silver within the Comex/CME futures exchange. See the article What is the Comex? for more detail. The charts and tables below specifically analyze the physical stock/inventory data at the Comex to show the physical movement of metal into and out of Comex vaults.
Garbage in, garbage out. The phrase is usually associated with computers, but it also applies to the formulas used to generate government economic data. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey goes over the January CPI and retail sales data with that phrase in mind.
With the CPI losing the relief from cooling energy prices, this month showed a solid uptick in prices, coming in at 0.54% (~6.6% annualized).
The Federal Government ran a deficit of -$39B in January. While that may not seem like much, it looks worse when compared to the average January.
You’ve probably heard the saying that history might not repeat, but it often rhymes. If that’s true, looking back at the runup to the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession should cause concern. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey looks at some of the parallels between then and now. He also digs deeper into the January jobs report and explains why you should be skeptical.
A bill introduced in the Wisconsin Senate would create a state sales tax exemption on the sale of gold and silver bullion. By effectively repealing the sales tax, the bill would relieve some of the tax burden on investors, and take a step toward treating precious metal bullion as money instead of a commodity.
Despite hitting the debt ceiling, the US Treasury managed to add $35 billion in new debt during January.
The Treasury has employed extraordinary measures, including exchanging Non-Marketable (e.g., Government employee retirement funds) and other forms of debt for short-term Bills. The balance on Bills grew by $241 billion which was the largest single-month growth since at least January 2021.
The December Trade Deficit increased after a major drop in November. The total came in at $67B which was 10% greater than November’s $61B, but still well below the 6-month high from October of $77B. It is also below the $79B Trade Deficit from December 2021.
