Category: Gold and Silver 2022
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Monday, March 28, 2022
Currency Wars Center on Russia’s Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
In response to Russia’s war on Ukraine, the U.S. and G-7 countries have launched a currency war against the Kremlin. Sanctions imposed on the Russian central bank have effectively blacklisted the country from the U.S. dollar-dominated global financial system.
Now the Biden administration is attempting to prevent Russia from using gold as an alternative medium of exchange.
Last week, the Treasury Department declared, “US persons are prohibited from engaging in any transaction – including gold-related transactions – involving the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation or the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.”
Friday, March 25, 2022
Is There Any Gold in Virtual Worlds Like Metaverse? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Imagine all the people… living life in the Metaverse. Once we immerse ourselves in the digital sphere, gold may go out of fashion. Or maybe not?
Do you already have your avatar? If not, maybe you should consider creating one, as the Metaverse is coming! What is the Metaverse? It is a digital, three-dimensional world where people are represented by avatars, a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection, the next evolution of the internet, “extended reality,” and the latest buzzword in the marketplace since Facebook changed its name to Meta. If you still have no idea what I’m talking about, you can watch this educational video or just Spielberg’s Ready Player One.
The idea of personalities being uploaded online is an intriguing concept, isn’t it? In this vision, people meet with others, play, and simply hang out in a digital world. Imagine friends turning group chats on Messenger or WhatsApp into group meetups in the Metaverse of family gatherings in virtual homes. Ultimately, people will probably be doing pretty much everything there, except eating, sleeping, and using the restroom.
Monday, March 14, 2022
Silver $100 – Nothing Has Changed / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
In retrospect, nothing much has changed since I published my original article $100 Silver Has Come And Gone in October 2019.
The price is higher than it was at the time the article was written, and that is certainly positive. However, the net change since then does not alter the fundamental arguments stated in the original article. Let’s review the salient points now.
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Sunday, March 13, 2022
Gold’s next bull leg in progress; but a test is due for the metal & miners / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
“2022: The Golden Year” activates…
…as gold and the miners hit our short-term upside targets this week.
In August of 2020 we noted the danger signals for gold based on sentiment excess coming out of the acute pandemic fear phase. We also noted the need for a multi-year bullish Cup to build a proper handle after that excess. A Cup’s handle is actually a downward trending bull flag.
In December of 2021we noted that 2022 would be the “Golden Year”.
And so it is. It took 1.5 years of handle-making (see chart below) and that phase, which cast doubt on the monetary metal among the public and even some of gold’s staunchest supporters, was so healthy that words cannot describe. The angst was fueled by gold’s failure to act as an inflation hedge while cyclical commodities flew during the inflation trades of 2020-2021. And thus, an excellent handle to a bullish Cup is in the books.
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Sunday, March 13, 2022
Gold Likes Recessions - Could High Interest Rates Lead to One? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
We live in uncertain times, but one thing is (almost) certain: the Fed’s tightening cycle will be followed by an economic slowdown – if not worse.There are many regularities in nature. After winter comes spring. After night comes day. After the Fed’s tightening cycle comes a recession. This month, the Fed will probably end quantitative easing and lift the federal funds rate. Will it trigger the next economic crisis?
It’s, of course, more nuanced, but the basic mechanism remains quite simple. Cuts in interest rates, maintaining them at very low levels for a prolonged time, and asset purchases – in other words, easy monetary policy and cheap money – lead to excessive risk-taking, investors’ complacency, periods of booms, and price bubbles. On the contrary, interest rate hikes and withdrawal of liquidity from the markets – i.e., tightening of monetary policy – tend to trigger economic busts, bursts of asset bubbles, and recessions. This happens because the amount of risk, debt, and bad investments becomes simply too high.
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Sunday, March 13, 2022
Is Investing In Gold A Smart Decision For Retirement? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Whether or not you are investing in gold for retirement, it is always important to be informed. This article will help you decide if investing in gold is the right decision for your retirement.
When deciding on what to invest in, one of the most popular choices is gold. Gold has been used as a currency and an investment for thousands of years, and it continues to be a popular choice for investors today. Here are some reasons why you might want to consider investing in gold for your retirement.
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Saturday, March 12, 2022
Why Silver Is an "Oak-Solid" Investment / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Imagine what an oak tree's underground root ball looks like, with supportive tendrils spreading out in all directions, not unlike what the limbs of this magnificent specimen are doing above-ground.
The result is an impregnable presence in all directions of the compass. "Open on strike and at depth" as a mining geologist might say.
Like Mycelium (the vegetative part of a fungus-like bacterial colony consisting of infinitely branching thread-like tendrils that can produce everything from plastics to plant-based meat), silver permeates life across all cultures and climates.
A strong case can be made that a severe and sustained shortage of silver could impede and perhaps even cause an implosion of humankind's technological-quality of life.
Saturday, March 12, 2022
The Ukraine War Is on for Two Weeks. How Does It Affect Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
With each day of the Russian invasion, gold confirms its status as the safe-haven asset. Its long-term outlook has become more bullish than before the war.Two weeks have passed since the Russian attack on Ukraine. Two weeks of the first full-scale war in Europe in the 21th century, something I still can’t believe is happening. Two weeks of completely senseless conflict between close Slavic nations, unleashed without any reasonable justification and only for the sake of Putin’s imperial dreams and his vision of Soviet Reunion. Two weeks of destruction, terror, and death that captured the souls of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children.
Just yesterday, Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital in southern Ukraine. I used to be a fan of Russian literature and classic music (who doesn’t like Tolstoy or Tchaikovsky?), but the systematic bombing of civilian areas (and the use of thermobaric missiles) makes me doubt whether the Russians really belong to the family of civilized nations.
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Thursday, March 10, 2022
Gold Tries to Hold Above $2000 - Hard Landing Ahead? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Gold has hit $2,000 but is still struggling to maintain that historical level. It has already tried 8 times - will the ninth attempt succeed? Many indications make this doubtful.
Gold is attempting to break above the $2,000 milestone, and miners are trying to break above their declining resistance line. Will they manage to do so, and if so, how long will the rally last?
Tuesday, March 08, 2022
Ukraine’s Defense Shines ‒ and So Does Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Russian forces have made minimal progress against Ukraine in recent days. Unlike the invader, gold rallied very quickly and achieved its long-awaited target - $2000!
Nobody expected the Russian inquisition! Nobody expected such a fierce Ukrainian defense, either. Of course, the situation is still very dramatic. Russian troops continued their offensive and – although the pace slowed down considerably – they managed to make some progress, especially in southern Ukraine, by bolstering air defense and supplies. The invaders are probably preparing for the decisive assault on Kyiv. Where Russian soldiers can’t break the defense, they bomb civilian infrastructure and attack ordinary people, including targeting evacuation corridors, to spread terror. Several Ukrainian cities are besieged and their inhabitants lack basic necessities. The humanitarian crisis intensifies.
Sunday, March 06, 2022
Fed’s Tightening Cycle: Bullish or Bearish for Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
This month, the Fed is expected to hike interest rates. Contrary to popular belief, the tightening doesn't have to be adverse for gold. What does history show?March 2022 – the Fed is supposed to end its quantitative easing and hike the federal funds rate for the first time during recovery from a pandemic crisis . After the liftoff, the Fed will probably also start reducing the size of its mammoth balance sheet and raise interest rates a few more times. Thus, the tightening of monetary policy is slowly becoming a reality. The golden question is: how will the yellow metal behave under these conditions?
Let’s look into the past. The last tightening cycle of 2015-2019 was rather positive for gold prices. The yellow metal rallied in this period from $1,068 to $1,320 (I refer here to monthly averages), gaining about 24%, as the chart below shows.
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Friday, February 25, 2022
Gold: What Should We Expect Given the Ongoing Ukraine Conflict? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
As history shows, gold and silver rallies based on geopolitical tensions are often short-lived. Yesterday, a hint of a trend reversal appeared.
Don’t stop reading this mining stock analysis until you get to the part about junior mining stocks’ analogy. Something might interest you there.
While the unfortunate conflict confronting Russia and Ukraine has intensified in recent days, gold, silver, and mining stocks have benefited from the crisis. However, since history shows that geopolitical-tension-based rallies often reverse, Feb. 24 was likely a small indication of what should unfold over the next few months.
For example, gold’s sharp rally turned into a sharp intraday reversal on Feb. 24. While the S&P 500, the NASDAQ Composite, the S&P 500, and gold managed to end the session in the green, the GDX ETF declined by 1.93%.
Monday, February 21, 2022
Is It Worth Adding Gold to Your Portfolio in 2022? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Gold prices declined in 2021 and the prospects for 2022 are not impressive as well. However, the yellow metal’s strategic relevance remains high.Last month, the World Gold Council published two interesting reports about gold. The first one is the latest edition of Gold Demand Trends, which summarizes the entire last year. Gold supply decreased 1%, while gold demand rose 10% in 2021. Despite these trends, the price of gold declined by around 4%, which – for me – undermines the validity of the data presented by the WGC.
I mean here that the relevance of some categories of gold demand (jewelry demand, technological demand, the central bank’s purchases) for the price formation is somewhat limited. The most important driver for gold prices is investment demand. Unsurprisingly, this category plunged 43% in 2021, driven by large ETF outlfows.
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Thursday, February 17, 2022
Gold: Break-Out or Fake-Out? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Michael Ballanger looks at the recent rise in the gold price in light of what is happening in the broader markets and geopolitical activity.
Before I expand upon the events of the past week that caught my increasingly illusory attention span, I wish to impart upon my readers one of the many chasms that separate the generational narratives these days. When I first entered the Hallowed Halls of Bay Street in 1977, I was trained by men and women that can only be described as “warriors” in the sense that they carried a code of conduct into battle each and every day. Notwithstanding the blue blazers and grey-flannel slacks accompanying the perfunctory buttoned-down dress shirt, there was never a day nor occasion, no matter how casual, that did not demand a jacket and tie.
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Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Russia Ukraine Tension Blinded Gold Ignores the Real Threats: USDX and Fed / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Gold continues to benefit from the market turmoil and has apparently forgotten about medium-term problems. Meanwhile, the rising USD and a hawkish Fed await confrontation.
With financial markets whipsawing after every Russia-Ukraine headline, volatility has risen materially in recent days. With whispers of a Russian invasion on Feb. 16 (which I doubt will be realized), the game of hot potato has uplifted the precious metals market.
However, as I noted on Feb. 14, while the developments are short-term bullish, the PMs’ medium-term fundamentals continue to decelerate. For example, while the general stock market remains concerned about a Russian invasion, U.S. Treasury yields rallied on Feb. 14. With risk-off sentiment often born in the bond market, the safety trade benefiting the PMs didn’t materialize in U.S. Treasuries. As a result, bond traders aren’t demonstrating the same level of fear.
Friday, February 11, 2022
Gold Withstands the Storm. Will Miners Drag It off the Raft? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
In line with bearish bets, miners have thrown a match. Gold, however, doesn’t want to leave the ring without a fight. How long will it stay high?
While gold remains relatively firm despite stock market turbulence, rising real yields, and bearish technical indicators, even a confluence of headwinds hasn’t been able to knock the yellow metal off its lofty perch. However, mining stocks haven’t been so lucky. With my short position in the GDXJ ETF offering a great risk-reward proposition, the junior gold miners’ underperformance has played out exactly as I expected.
Moreover, with major spikes in volume preceding predictable sell-offs (follow the vertical dashed lines below), I’ve warned on several occasions that the GDX ETF is prone to tipping its hand – we saw this volume spike in January, which was the 2022 top (as of today). In addition, with mining investors’ power drying up by the day, the medium-term looks equally unkind.
Sunday, February 06, 2022
Will the Fed Tighten Gold? The Consequences Might Be Ignoble / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Beware, the Fed’s tightening of monetary policy could lift real interest rates! For gold, this poses a risk of prices wildly rolling down.The first FOMC meeting in 2022 is behind us. What can we expect from the US central bank this year and how will it affect the price of gold? Well, this year’s episode of Fed Street will be sponsored by the letter “T”, which stands for “tightening”. It will consist of three elements.
First, quantitative easing tapering. The asset purchases are going to end by early March. To be clear, during tapering, the Fed is still buying securities, so it remains accommodative, but less and less. Tapering has been very gradual and well-telegraphed to the markets, so it’s probably already priced in gold. Thus, the infamous taper tantrum shouldn’t replay.
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Sunday, February 06, 2022
Gold and SIlver, Precious Metals Sector Is at a Terrific Buy Spot / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
Technical Analyst Clive Maund examines the charts for the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, code GDX, and sees good cause to be positive about gold's future outlook.
In this update we are going to do something that we haven’t done for a while, which is to examine the charts for the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, code GDX, in an effort to figure out where it is in its cycle, and as we will see there is every reason to be positive about its future outlook.
Generally speaking, the Precious Metals sector has been dull for a long time, since early August 2020 to be exact and it has seriously underperformed the market as a whole, which is a positive in the sense that this makes it more undervalued with more upside.
In recent months, as we can see on the latest 6-month chart, GDX has been pretty much rangebound above a strong support level, with its overall trend being neutral to slightly lower. Over the past couple of weeks it has dropped quite sharply, which of course was partly in sympathy with the sharp drop in the broad market, and it is looking more of a buy here with the appearance of a bull hammer on Friday close to the support.
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Saturday, February 05, 2022
A Gold-centric Macro View / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
As the gold “community” rationalizes gold’s currently low standing…
As unpopular it may be, I cannot alter the truth as I see it. Marketing is fine, but never at the expense of truth, as with much financial media/analysis (with little disclaimers tucked in below the fold).
In my opinion, a sizeable component of the gold ‘market’ is actually marketing; to the fearful, to the naive, to the biased, to the politically rigid… Also in my opinion, Twitter is a breeding ground made for brief promos, sloganeering and bias reinforcement.
Pop up mini-screed behind us, let’s take another view of the macro from the perspective of a pretty rock that is heavy and does nothing, other than provide an anchor to long-term value in a bubble era where value is temporarily an outmoded concept. You don’t root for gold. You play the macro and keep an eye on gold, because when it is time to be bullish on gold, it will mean that…
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Saturday, February 05, 2022
Gold and silver Inflation Safe Havens / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
The US Federal Reserve, whose job is to keep unemployment in check and inflation in the “Goldilocks” zone of 2%, is telegraphing three interest rate increases of 0.25% each (1% at the high end of the range) this year.
Bloomberg believes the Fed might be more aggressive: “Our baseline is for the Fed to hike five times, each 25 basis points, this year, and balance-sheet runoff to begin in July. Our in-house rule for the Fed’s reaction function flags an upside risk for a 50 basis-point hike in March followed by five 25 basis-point hikes in the rest of the year.” Anna Wong, chief U.S. economist
The Fed has been wracking its brains trying to figure out how to control inflation, which is at a 40-year-high, and interest rate hikes are normally the usual panacea to cool an overheated, high-inflation economy.
The US Labor Department said that its Producer Price Index (PPI) rose 0.2% from November to December, bringing producer prices to a record-high 9.7%, the biggest calendar-year increase since data was first calculated in 2010.
The same report said US consumer prices increased solidly in December, led by gains in rental accommodation and used cars, culminating in the largest annual inflation rise in 40 years. Used-vehicle inflation is mostly driven by the shortage in semiconductor chips.
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