Advertising
Advertising
twitter
youtube
facebook
instagram
linkedin
Advertising

Powell Once Again Proved to Be Gold’s Joy Destroyer

Powell Once Again Proved to Be Gold’s Joy Destroyer | FXMAG.COM
Aa
Share
facebook
twitter
linkedin

Table of contents

  1. Implications for Gold

    Inflation worries have intensified, gold started to rally on Friday… and then Powell came, ruining the party and killing the bullish vibe.

    Friday (October 22, 2021) started wonderfully for the yellow metal. Gold was appreciating since early morning, and it even jumped above $1,810 around 10-11 A.M. New York Time. As the chart below shows, the London P.M. Fix was above $1,800, the key psychological level under which gold has been stuck recently.

    powell once again proved to be gold s joy destroyer grafika numer 1powell once again proved to be gold s joy destroyer grafika numer 1

    Unfortunately, the joy was short-lived. Gold dived again below $1,800 later on Friday. What was the reason? Well, it might be just inherent weakness and inability to overcome its resistance level. But it seems that Jerome Powell contributed to the drop, if not triggered it.

    He participated in an online conference hosted by the South African Reserve Bank on Friday, making remarks that were considered hawkish. What did Powell say? Well, he reiterated that the Fed is on track to start tapering its asset purchases this year and that the whole process is expected to end by mid-2022.

    Advertising

    However, Powell downplayed the inflation threat. Even though he acknowledged that risks were growing and that “elevated inflation [is] likely to last longer than previously expected and well into next year”, he also said that supply-chain issues would eventually be resolved and inflation would fall back to the Fed’s target of 2%. As a consequence of Powell’s remarks, the price of gold declined roughly $30, from almost $1,815 to $1,785. The yellow metal rebounded slightly later, but it was unable to return to $1,800.

    Implications for Gold

    What is happening in the gold market right now? Well, it seems that inflation worries have intensified recently, and gold started to grow (a bit timidly, but still) on those fears. Unfortunately for gold bulls, Powell threw cold water on gold’s rally on Friday. After all, the upcoming tapering of quantitative easing, as well as the cycle of interest rate hikes, could continue to create downward pressure on gold.

    On the other hand, Powell also made some dovish comments, as he emphasized that the Fed was going to taper its asset purchases soon, but it wouldn’t raise the federal funds rate until the maximum employment was reached. He said: “I do think it’s time to taper; I don’t think it’s time to raise rates”.

    What is even more important, Mr. Market has finally awakened from the dream about a world without inflation. In other words, investors started to question the Fed’s narrative about the ‘merely transitory’ price pressure. Given that the economic growth is going to slow down, the risk of stagflation is growing, which should support gold. Please take a look at the chart below.

    powell once again proved to be gold s joy destroyer grafika numer 2powell once again proved to be gold s joy destroyer grafika numer 2

    As one can see, the market-based inflation expectations rose significantly last week. The inflation breakeven rates in the 10-year bonds increased from 2.54% to 2.64%, while in 5-year bonds they jumped from 2.71% to 2.94%, the highest level since March 2005. It means that the markets expect more persistent inflation than the Fed and bet that the US central bank will stay behind the curve.

    Advertising

    We can call it “the revenge of the supply”. Policymakers have been focused for years on the demand side of the economy, just to discover that the supply side matters too. Right now, companies all over the world are facing supply-chain bottlenecks, shortage of workers, energy crisis, transportation crisis, and semiconductors squeeze. Thus, many of them are now passing higher costs on (in the form of higher prices) to consumers, indicating even more increases down the road.

    The bottom line is that rising inflationary expectations are fundamentally positive for gold prices. So far, inflationary worries have been counterweighted by the expectations of the Fed’s tightening cycle and economic recovery. However, the growth is going to slow down, while the date of the first hike is approaching quickly. Therefore, gold’s outlook should improve in the coming months.

    If you enjoyed today’s free gold report, we invite you to check out our premium services. We provide much more detailed fundamental analyses of the gold market in our monthly Gold Market Overview reports and we provide daily Gold & Silver Trading Alerts with clear buy and sell signals. In order to enjoy our gold analyses in their full scope, we invite you to subscribe today. If you’re not ready to subscribe yet though and are not on our gold mailing list yet, we urge you to sign up. It’s free and if you don’t like it, you can easily unsubscribe. Sign up today!

    Arkadiusz Sieron, PhD
    Sunshine Profits: Effective Investment through Diligence & Care


    Arkadiusz Sieron

    Arkadiusz Sieron

    Hi, my name is Arkadiusz Sieroń. Call me a liar, but I am writing about the precious metals thanks to Arthur Laffer, Alan Greenspan, John Keynes and Fredrich Hayek. Really! Would you like to know how these economists, some of whom have been dead for a long time, triggered my adventure with gold? When I was in high school, I took part in the Entrepreneurship Olympic, one of the biggest thematic competitions for pupils from secondary schools. During my preparations, I studied an academic textbook, in which I came across a Laffer curve. Eureka! If the tax revenues are the same at low and high tax rates, the government should lower them! I did not win the competition, but I achieved much more. I decided to become an economist! And I loved the idea of small government and economic freedom since that very moment. After graduating from high school, I moved to the capital. I was very excited, as I started to study economics at the best economics university in the country. However, the professors disappointed me very quickly. Why? They all were statists, supporting extensive government intervention and fiat currencies. Gold? It is a barbarous relic! Have you not read Lord Keynes? I was very depressed. I even considered giving up my studies in economics and enrolling in the Philosophy Faculty! You can see now that I was really desperate. When I was contemplating nothingness and vanity of vanities, a few of my classmates lent me a handful of fascinating books, such as Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. I also discovered the publications of the Austrian economists who supported the idea of the gold standard. It sounded crazy in the 21th century, but it was inspiring. I rediscovered the sense of studying economics. I continued my studies and one day I read these words: “Gold and economic freedom are inseparable”. Try guess who wrote them. Don’t give up, try once again. Don’t know? Alan Greenspan. Shocking, right? This is a quote from his “Gold and Economic Freedom”, an article published in 1966. Several years before he became the Fed Chair, and several more before the real estate bubble, that he helped to pump, up burst. Quite ironic, don’t you think? Both his essay and the Great Recession (and the accompanying bull market) motivated me to study investment portfolio management and the precious metals. I became a certified Investment Adviser very soon and I started to work for the biggest pension fund in the country. My corporate career seemed to be very promising. However, I quickly discovered that the company invested most of the participants’ funds into Treasuries or shares of the big state companies. And they didn’t even want to hear about investing in precious metals. I quit. I found a shelter at the university, as a Ph.D. candidate and – after a defense of my thesis about certain negative consequences of inflation (i.e. the Cantillon effect) – as an Assistant Professor. I was finally free to study economics, freedom, and gold. The more I read about gold, the more I was terrified. Most of the so-called experts who write about the precious metals, don’t have any idea about the subject they discuss. They treat gold as a mere commodity. Or they claim that gold is either worthless as it does not bring any yield or that its price should always rise. I was really let down by the state of understanding of the gold market among the analysts and investors. But I could not do too much. Until the sun shined down on me. I got a job offer at Sunshine Profits. I didn’t hesitate a second and accepted it, although many professors discouraged me: “You are a scholar, focus on science and do not write silly newsletters about bullion" -they advised me. But I did not listen to them, as they clearly didn’t understand the nature of gold. It is not a barbarous relic, it is the longest used money in history, and a clinking witness of human civilization. Gold is the asset, which used to serve as the safe- haven and portfolio diversifier for investors from the entire world for years. I wanted to study its properties and to share with my knowledge with people who do not have time for that. I wanted to help investors to better understand fundamentals of the gold market and improve their investment decisions. I’m happy that I can do that at Sunshine Profits. I’m really proud to be a member of our team and provide investors with high quality investment analyses about the gold market.


    Advertising
    Advertising