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An historical (not hysterical) look at gold

Around the world in the last two weeks, people have rushed retail stores to buy physical gold. Perth Mint has reported sales are at their highest level in five years, and they traded over the weekend to cope with demand. People are queuing across Asian cities in panic-like conditions, while the US mint has been forced to cancel sales of its gold coins. Buyers are responding to the rapid price fall to USD1,322 per ounce in mid-April, the lowest level for two years.

What is most extraordinary is that retail investors usually react to rapid market falls in the opposite way. When equity prices drop, investors usually panic from fear it will fall further. Inflows to managed funds are always at their strongest when the market is at its peak, and outflows at their highest when markets bottom. But something else is happening with gold.


Source: Compiled by Grant Williams of Mauldin Economics from various public sources.

A brief look at gold price history

Most of the time over history, one ounce of gold has been able to buy items worth the equivalent of around USD500 in today’s dollars adjusted for inflation. It has done so for much of the past 2,500 years through many societies. Occasionally the gold price (when measured in paper currencies) surges when paper currencies devalue, but it then falls back again in real terms. If bought below its long run level, gold can provide a hedge against the devaluation of paper, but if bought above the level it is speculation, not ‘investing’. It is not a matter of whether gold represents a store of value or some other safe haven characteristic. For an investor, it is only worth buying when it is cheap.

The gold price reached USD1,900 per ounce on 5 September 2011 in the midst of the US debt ceiling and credit downgrade crises. Since then it has fallen by more than 20%, including a 10% fall on 15 April 2013, triggered by fears that Cyprus and the PIIGS may have to sell their gold reserves to repay debts.

Gold may shoot up to USD4,000 or USD5,000 in one of two scenarios: (a) an extreme left wing outcome resulting in run-away US inflation leading to a breakdown of society; or (b) an extreme right wing scenario with a Tea Party-led Republican government bringing back the gold standard. These scenarios look remote. People who bought gold in the last bubble in 1979-80 are still waiting to get their money back in real terms after inflation 33 years later.

Investors cannot consider gold without also thinking about currencies and inflation, as the three are inextricably linked. Long term holding of gold makes sense as an inflation hedge or as a store of value if bought at or below the long term price around which it has oscillated for thousands of years. However, if paper currencies collapse, the nominal value of gold expressed in paper money terms can rise dramatically. So gold has most appeal if the investor’s home currency is about to experience massive hyper-inflation which destroys the value of paper money, which is unlikely in Australia in the near future. Or since the price of gold is expressed in USD terms, any expected rapid destruction in the value of a home currency may merit purchases of gold.

Of course, profits from short term trading are always possible as a more speculative bet, but long term portfolios are designed to look after long term needs, such as producing income and protecting wealth.

A copy of our comprehensive 2012 study of gold can be found here.

 

Ashley Owen is Joint CEO of Philo Capital Advisers and a Director of Third Link Investment Managers.

 

1 Comments
scottb
May 03, 2013

"Investors cannot consider gold without also thinking about currencies and inflation."

Indeed. But in considering inflation, Mr Owen has forgotten that governments purposely and systematically understate the amount of actual inflation so as to make it possible for debtors everywhere – and governments are the greatest of all debtors – to repay obligations in a devalued currency, thereby enabling the ongoing operations of a debt and liquidity-based economy. The U.S government reports inflation at about 2.5% (the basis of Mr Owens analysis), but in fact it's most likely significantly higher...close to 10%. Check out Shadowstats.com.

Adjusted for true inflation, gold peaked in 1980 at about $5,000 which would suggest there's some room to the upside today.

And one can't ignore the size of the monetary base today. A look at the the ratio of the St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base to the price of gold shows it above 2.0 ...almost record levels. All previous gold 'booms' have only stopped when the ratio falls below 0.22. And we are a very long way from that.

And consider this. In January 1980 when gold peaked at $875, the average price for gold for the month was $669. The monetary base in January 1980 was $132 billion, which means it took only 198 million ounces of gold to cover the monetary base. In January 2012 when gold averaged roughly $1,600, the monetary base was $2,750 billion. Thus it would take 1.7 billion ounces to cover the monetary base. To get the same coverage as in 1980, gold would have to be trading at almost $14,000.

Or maybe you can look at it like this. If the US actually has the 8,133 metric tonnes of gold they claim they have in their reserves (World Gold Council - World Official Gold Holdings) and the US used that gold to back the US monetary base, gold would have to rise $9,745 per ounce. Even backing 40% of the monetary base would see gold at $3,900 an ounce.

 

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