It was early January 2020, and weird things were happening in the world.
Socialism was on the march in the Land of the Free. Conflict, it seemed, was exploding everywhere, both abroad (North Korea, Iran, Yemen) and at home.
And most notably, over in China, the Communist government was literally welding people into their homes to ‘keep them safe’ from a bizarre virus that was spreading rapidly.
It was only January, but 2020 was already looking pretty uncertain.
I wrote an article about preparing for uncertainty. And, with respect to finance, I wrote that gold was a very sensible asset to own in such times: “Frankly I don’t think anyone can credibly say that they have any idea what’s going to happen in the world in 2020. And that’s why I own gold.”
We soon found out. One of the most ridiculous hysterias in human history gripped the world. Countries were locked down. Governments and central banks conjured trillions of dollars out of thin air to pay people to stay home and not work.
Three months later, in mid-April, I wrote again that the Fed’s virtually unlimited money printing was going to be “very inflationary” and encouraged readers to consider gold once again (along with other real assets).
Quite predictably, the price of gold shot up, from $1560 in early January, to $1720 in April, to nearly $2000 in August.
At that point there was a lot of fickle, speculative capital flowing into the gold market. Gold ETFs were receiving huge inflows, pushing the price to (what was then) an all-time high.
So I wrote to our audience again on August 3rd stating that, “a short-term correction may be in order” for gold. The price peaked three days later, and then fell be several hundred dollars per ounce.
I started writing about gold again in earnest back in early 2023, a few months after the price had bottomed out. The fiscal trajectory of the United States under Joe Biden was painfully obvious at that point. The national debt was growing at an unprecedented peace-time pace, and other nations were lining up against the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Gold was a smart move. And by the end of the year I concluded that “we could easily see central banks around the world ditching their US dollars and loading up on gold as part of a new, de-dollarized global financial system.”
And that’s what started happening: fed up with dollar inflation, US government dysfunction, and America’s gargantuan national debt, foreign central banks began trading their dollars for gold.
The gold price soared as a result.
Even in March of this year, when gold was at its all time high of the time at $2,150, I wrote that gold was actually a contrarian investment with a lot more room to rise.
It went all the way up to almost $2,800.
Now, I’m not citing my own work to be boastful. Trust me, I’ve gotten plenty of things wrong.
My point is to illustrate that I AM NOT A GOLD BUG. I don’t hold a fanatical view about gold that it’s the only thing worth owning and is only going to go up.
Furthermore, I don’t think about gold strictly in terms of price; that’s way too one-dimensional.
Gold is a great insurance policy. It’s a hedge against systemic risks. It’s great for estate planning and asset protection. It holds its value over inflation over long periods of time. And, sometimes, it can also be a fantastic speculation.
The above examples demonstrate that I’m not shy about saying whether I think gold has been overbought, is too expensive, or too cheap. My assessment obviously changes when the information changes.
Right now one thing is clear: foreign central banks were the ones responsible for driving the price of gold to all-time highs throughout 2024, just as I suggested would be the case in 2023.
And that was happening at a time when most individual investors (plus ‘smart money’ hedge funds) were actually selling gold. So they were missing out on the boom.
But that started to change over the past few months.
Data from Gold ETFs around the world show that individual investors have been buying tons of gold. Problem is— that money tends to be very short-term… and fickle.
We can already see it; a lot of those same small investors have already yanked their money out of gold after the US election, which is why the price is down about 10% from its record high.
But, again, the real long-term driver of gold demand is central banks. And I think a lot of foreign central banks are sitting on the sidelines right now.
With gold already near its all-time high, they have paused their buying spree, and they’re now looking at this incoming administration to see what happens next.
Can Elon trim the federal budget? Will there be a US energy renaissance or AI-fueled productivity bonanza? Will the government become functional once again? Will America’s unparalleled military superiority be restored? Will sensible monetary policy reign in inflation?
Because if those things actually happen, then the dollar has a pretty good shot of continuing its reign as the dominant global reserve currency.
And I think a lot of central banks that have been buying so much gold are happy to wait for the next several months to see what happens. Hence gold could easily trade sideways for a while, or even fall.
All that said, gold is still worth owning… because there’s still long-term risk to the US and to the dollar.
Vladimir Putin recently made some comments that a lot of folks misinterpreted as “Russia and the BRICS nations will keep using the dollar. . .”
But that’s not what Putin said.
Putin said it was the US government’s weaponization of the dollar that pushed Russia and the BRICs nations away. And as long as that threat remains, the BRICS+ bloc is plowing ahead with developing an alternate financial system.
Many large economies have already started trading with one another in a currency other than the US dollar. And that trend is likely to continue, i.e. the dollar is going to have competition.
Not to mention, there’s still a ton of uncertainty in the world. The national debt is still way too high. The Leftists still want to storm to power and Make America California. Conflict might still break out.
These are all sensible reasons to own some gold.
But given that the key driver of the gold price, i.e. central banks, are probably going to sit on the sidelines over the next few months, I wouldn’t be buying right now on the expectation of a short-term price surge.
