Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Merrill Lynch: "Gold is Inversely Correlated to Global Short-Term Interest Rates"


Nouriel Roubini quotes a report from Merill Lynch as follows:

"Gold is inversely correlated to global short-term interest rates and there is a race right now towards 0%. Production is down 4.0% y/y while fiat currencies globally are being created at a double digit rate by the world's central banks....As for all the talk of a 'gold bubble,' it would take a nearly 625% surge in gold to over US$6,000/oz and a flat stock market to actually get the ratio of the two asset classes back to where it was three decades ago when bullion was in an unsustainable bubble phase."

Roubini goes on to paraphrase the Merrill report as follows:

Short-term rates of 0% are bullish for gold, which serves as a store of value but is a useful hedge against deflation as well, since deflation is inherently destabilizing for financial assets. In the 2001-03 deflationary period, gold rose more than 30%, not to mention the prospect of a return to a dollar bear market...

Gold tends to be less sensitive to global economic slowdown than industrial metals or energy and works better as a hedge against crisis than inflation
For more on gold and deflation, see this.

1 comment:

  1. Gold is just another speculative bubble. Where is the demand for gold otherwise?

    There is a sucker born every minute, that's all the rising price of gold indicates.

    What those who analyze these things fail to tell their victims is, of all those who will jump in and drive up the price of gold, MORE THAN half, will have to sell below what they paid for their gold on the way out.

    It's more than half because the brokers continually siphon a percentage, -on the way up, and on the way down too. The faster the ups and downs, the more the brokers siphon.

    Only the brokers are guaranteed to make out on these speculative rackets. And meanwhile -literally no one is adding value to the economy.

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