Odds are high that the gold price is heading for a fall. Intraday today, the market cap of gold as a percent of the US money supply (M2) hit an all-time high: higher than its peak in 1980 when inflation and interest rates soared to the mid-teens and, even more shocking...
the ratio of gold to M2 has hit the all time high recorded during The Great Depression in 1934. In that crisis, the dollar devalued relative to gold by almost 70% on January 31, 1934, the government banned private ownership of gold, and M2 collapsed.
The US economy today looks nothing like the double-digit inflation-prone 1970s or the deflationary bust of the 1930s. True, foreign central banks have been diversifying away from the dollar for years; yet, the 10-year Treasury bond yield peaked at 5% in late 2023 and is now 4.2%.
While parabolic moves often take asset prices higher than most investors would think possible, the out-of-this-world spikes tend to occur at the end of a cycle. In our view, the bubble today is not in AI, but in gold. An upturn in the dollar could pop that bubble, a la 1980 to 2000 when the gold price dropped more than 60%.
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