Gold, Oil, Fiat Currencies, & Where We’re Headed This is a little different from my other Scribd postings, perhaps this is the beginning of a blog. I don’t know, I don’t have the time to write a blog consistently and since I prefer charts & graphs, blogging isn’t in my future. But we’ll see how this goes. At any rate, a number of things have crossed both my screen and desk the past few days. So I wanted to take a step back and do something people just don’t seem to do anymore: step back, assess the big picture, and see what we can gleen. A lot has been made of the Fisk story in The Independent earlier this week. With reporting like this, can you blame people for making a fuss?
‐ Robert Fisk “The demise of the dollar” The Independent – 10/6/09 It sounds bleak, and it gets worse.
‐ Robert Fisk “The demise of the dollar” The Independent – 10/6/09 For kicks and giggles, I put the following table and chart together. First, the chart. It’s a 5 year daily chart that shows gold in terms of dollars, oil, euros, yen, and reminbi. I indexed price levels back to the 10/6/04 level to create an index by which to compare relative price movements. Take a look at the next page to see the chart.
Gold vs. USD, Oil, EUR, RMB & JPY 400.00
350.00
Index (10/6/04 = 100)
300.00
250.00
200.00
150.00
100.00
50.00
GLD/$
GLD/Oil
GLD/EUR
GLD/RMB
8/6/2009
6/6/2009
4/6/2009
2/6/2009
12/6/2008
8/6/2008
10/6/2008
6/6/2008
4/6/2008
2/6/2008
12/6/2007
10/6/2007
8/6/2007
6/6/2007
4/6/2007
2/6/2007
12/6/2006
8/6/2006
10/6/2006
6/6/2006
4/6/2006
2/6/2006
12/6/2005
8/6/2005
10/6/2005
6/6/2005
4/6/2005
2/6/2005
12/6/2004
10/6/2004
0.00
GLD/JPY
To me, this is simply a dollar punt. The dark blue GLD/$ line represents the dollar price of gold and you can see the dollar has weakened more than the other currencies. It’s not that the Japanese, Europeans, and Chinese have done better jobs managing their economies fundamentally, it’s simply that right now the world doesn’t want to hold dollars. To me, it’s more of a tell regarding market psychology than anything else. One other thing to think about: gold in barrels of oil. It’s only been in the past year where you can see a pronounced move higher in gold vis‐à‐vis oil. So I thought I’d include this chart that shows that. This is a 4 year daily chart of gold priced in barrels of crude. Note how stable this ratio has been up until the past year.
Gold Priced in Barrels of WTI Crude
30
30
25
25
20
20
15
15
10
10
5
5 06 Source: Haver Analytics
07
08
09
Another way to look at the data here is to look at a correlation matrix that looks at the indices. The table below shows the correlations between all of the indices:
But what else is going on right now? The dollar’s demise is thoroughly playing itself out in the press, but it’s not the only story. Well, for starters, we can juxtapose the death of the dollar with some comments I saw from Mark Sunshine on a post at riskcenter.com
‐Mark Sunshine “And Now for Some Really Bad Economic News…” www.riskcenter.com – 10/6/09 Here are some charts of the money supply metrics Sunshine is talking about. First, is the monthly chart for velocity of money.
Velocity of Money: Ratio of Nominal GDP to Money Supply M2 R ati o
2.100
2.100
2.025
2.025
1.950
1.950
1.875
1.875
1.800
1.800
1.725
1.725
1.650
1.650 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 Source: Macroeconomic Advisers/Federal Reserve Board/Haver Analytics
Next is a chart of the M1 money multiplier:
09
To get the dollar collapse we would need to see a for a hyperinflationary scenario to take hold, demand for something would have to spiral out of control so fast it would cause the indicators Sunshine wrote about to reverse course. I don’t know what it would be, but I do know that it probably won’t be gold. And unless people want to start building grain silos, or oil and gas storage facilities, it won’t be some other commodity. Putting it all together, it seems there are two things I can take away from all of this: 1) It’s inevitable to me that the forces of deflation we see in the monetary aggregate data and the market’s perception of dollar hyperinflation are on a collision course. The monetary aggregate data points to a strengthening dollar while the price of gold indicates a weakening one. 2) When looking at gold’s price moves relative to crude, it’s way overdone. The ratio of barrels of oil to an ounce of gold is double what it has been for the part 4 – 5 years. If you believe in mean reversion, that means one of two things has to play itself out: oil has to start heading higher or gold is headed lower. Either way, it speaks to a possibility of seeing crude outperform gold and the trade to put on here would be to skewed to playing crude to the long side and gold to the short side. And nobody can seem to make a case for a strong move to higher crude oil prices, we could see a lot of long gold positions put on over the past 6 months get wiped out. One other thing to think about is this: there are lot of prognosticators that believe gold is headed to $1,500 ‐ $2,000 an ounce. Not a lot of folks have talked about a timeframe for the move or if there’s a move back to $850 along the way to their price target. Since risk is always two‐sided, it begs to ask how long it will take to get to those levels as well as the trajectory of the move. I have a sneaky suspicion that
the gold trade has gotten awfully crowded now and the next big move is actually to the downside – not up.