Gold Still Remains An Investors Favourite

It was like a sabbatical for me as I write after a fortnight. There was too much volatility in the markets where prices were just swinging. Varied reasons being responsible, I actually wanted to take time out, analyse the global scenarios and then put across my inputs on gold’s behaviour.

Last week we saw unprecedented government action to get on top of the developing COVID-19 situation in Australia to avoid what we have seen in other countries. Not surprisingly, the combination of continuing falls in financial markets across all asset classes, societal restrictions and talk of further controls had investors running to safety.

Globally we witnessed acceleration in volumes and this has been the case across the whole physical bullion industry talking to our many contacts.

What has confused many is that they can see the massive demand for physical gold and silver while at the same time the price of the metals has fallen – at least in US dollars. The volatility in the spot price reflects a battle between the physical market and paper desk traders and trend following algorithms.

Last week there were a lot of articles that were similar to those back in the global financial crisis – stories about shortages and that the physical market and the paper market are, or have, disconnected.

The driver behind those stories has been the reality of physical products selling out and going on back order along with increases in premiums. This has been particularly the case in America, which has this week only really woken up to the threat of COVID-19 - resulting in increased demand for physical gold and silver.

The stand-out country at the moment is the USA which is paying a terrible price for the apparent downplaying of the virus in its early stages by President Trump, who as recently as February 28th referred to the virus incidence in the U.S. as a hoax, and saying the virus would miraculously go away.  No doubt many Trump believers thus treated any dire warnings of the pandemic as hugely overblown.  Now we are in a situation where the U.S. is the third most affected country in the world and if the virus spread continues at its current rate could even overtake China as the world’s most affected nation within a month.

The entire world is now aware or rather panic about the deadly virus. This panic is creating significant movement in the precious metals market.

Precious metals have seen price falls along with the equities markets, but in the case of gold not nearly to the same extent.  It keeps on being taken down below the $1,500 psychological level, but so far has invariably bounced back  Year to date the yellow metal is down around 1% while U.S. equities for example are down around 35% over the same period.  But this price fall is in U.S. dollars.  In most other countries, due to dollar strength, gold is close to all-time highs in domestic currencies and is thus serving extremely well as a wealth protector in these nations – indeed in most of the world.

Like most asset classes, gold is being affected by the unprecedented economic and financial market conditions in play around the globe. We believe that recent volatility in the gold price has been driven by massive liquidations across all assets, and likely magnified by leveraged positions and rule-based trading.

Gold has also likely been used to raise cash to cover losses in other asset classes because:

• it remains one of the best performing asset classes year-to-date, despite recent fluctuations
• it is a high quality and highly liquid asset, trading over US$260 billion (bn) per day in March

Looking ahead, we believe the deceleration in economic growth will undoubtedly impact gold consumer demand and gold’s volatility may remain high, but high risk levels combined with widespread negative real rates and quantitative easing will be supportive of gold investment demand as a safe haven.

But what we need to really know is that Why did the gold price drop alongside stocks?

The answer is linked to several factors. The most prominent of these is the massive liquidation virtually all asset classes experienced in the past week. And gold was no exception.

Even longer-term US treasuries prices fell, despite a second unscheduled cut by the Fed on 15 March slashing the Fed funds rate to pre-2016 levels. The 10-year US treasury yield is trading above 1% after reaching a historical low of 0.33% on 9 March.

As a high quality, liquid asset gold may also have been used to raise cash.

It may take a while for financial markets to stabilise. Amidst high volatility, the gold price may experience additional swings, but the long-term implications of an environment combining high risk and lower opportunity cost should support gold investment demand.

We also expect central banks to remain net gold buyers overall, albeit likely not at the same rate as in the past two years.

Bullion is set for back-to-back weekly losses for the first time since September after the dollar hit a record, although its drop was pared Friday as investors took stock of the outlook for the global economy, the spread of the disease, and looser monetary policy. With deep losses in risk assets this month, some investors have been forced to sell gold to raise cash. A similar pattern -- losses at times of extreme market stress -- was seen in bullion at the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008, before it went on to peak in 2011.

These major crashes show that Gold and silver eventually respond to the crisis of the time and prices ultimately soar.

You’ll notice this occurred during periods of both inflation and deflation. While they both tend to do better in inflation, they ultimately rose in response to crisis.

This of course is what we have on our hands now. History says that despite the current selloff in gold and silver, the crisis will draw in more and more investors and as a result, eventually impact their prices in a major way.

Prithviraj Kothari is the author of this article. Find more information about Prithviraj Kothari.

Gold Might Come On For Profit Taking

It has been a strong start to 2020 for gold, with the yellow metal rising by 12.99% in AUD terms, and 4.54% in USD terms in the first two months of the year, despite the sharp correction in precious metal prices last Friday.

Onto these wild market swings and uncertainty, gold once again provided a safe haven against emerging turmoil. The biggest weekly gain since 2009 took it to levels not seen for seven years, leaving both silver and platinum trailing in the process.

The coronavirus outbreak has worsened to now more than 95,000 infected worldwide and has spread globally. The threat of the coronavirus on global economic growth has now impacted all asset classes, global trade, liquidity and central bank policies.

It was in mid-February when the severity of the economic impact of the coronavirus began to be reflected by major companies, such as Apple when it provided earnings warnings. For several weeks major parts of China were locked down (closing businesses) to contain the outbreak. The impact was a reminder of how important China is in the global supply chain and its impact on global growth. Yields fell, yield curves flattened and inverted inflation expectations rolled over and commodity prices collapsed.

The negative economic impact of the coronavirus that for weeks has been signalled through weakness, finally spread like a wildfire to the rest of the market. The week kicked off with an emergency 50bp rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve, a move that only strengthened the sense of panic in the market. Within a few days, global sovereign bond yields had collapsed to a record low, gold and stock market volatility spiked while the dollar came under some significant selling pressure as longs were exited.

On March 3, the U.S. Federal Reserve (the "Fed") made a surprise emergency cut in interest rates taking the Fed Funds rates down 50 basis points to a range of 1.00%-1.25%. The rate cut made an immediate, positive impact on gold bullion and gold equities.

The emergency rate cut from the U.S. Federal Reserve on Monday, is, according to market expectations, likely to be followed by another 50 bp cut at the regular FOMC meeting on March 18. So far, the low point stands at 0.20% which could be reached before the November U.S. elections.

A perfect storm of supporting factors drove gold’s rally and outperformance. Safe haven demand aside, it was the collapse in U.S. 10-year real yields to -0.60%, a seven-year low, sudden dollar weakness - as yield spreads to other currencies collapsed - and continued stock market weakness.

There is a clear rush to safe haven assets at the moment and gold is a major beneficiary of this situation. Monday trading saw another blood bath emerge on global stock markets.

Where the world is just trying to accept the impact this virus has created all over, another shock to the global markets was the breakdown of relations across the OPEC+ group.

As if corona virus panic was not enough, this was an add-on to rock investor confidence world over. Fears that waves of oil from Saudi and Russian wells are about to hit the market- has provided a sucker punch to market sentiment.

The ultimate safe haven asset in these troubled times is clearly gold. Its sentimental qualities are eternal, while the hard currency’s role as a hedge against inflation makes is a particularly attractive asset to buy today, Central banks have already been loosening monetary policy like crazy to support global growth over the past year. More stimuli is coming down the line following the Fed’s interest cuts of last week to offset the impact of the coronavirus, too.

That is why if you get a dip in gold prices, add to it. Dedicating your entire portfolio to one particular asset is not a wise decision. In fact, I, would rather advise investors to allot around 10-15% of their portfolio in gold so that it becomes a hedge tool.

It’s a different world altogether now. There is collateral damage on most risk portfolios and the lone survivor of gains is fold which is nearly up 12 % on global futures and 17% on local futures markets. So gold will keep on coming for massive profit taking if funding losses of other assets is needed.

Prithviraj Kothari is the author of this article. Find more information about Prithviraj Kothari.