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Weak November Payrolls Won’t Help Gold

Weak November Payrolls Won’t Help Gold | FXMAG.COM
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  1. Implications for Gold

     

    November employment report was mixed. Unfortunately for gold, however, it won’t stop the Fed’s hawkish agenda.

    Nonfarm payrolls disappointed in November. As the chart below shows, the US labor market added only 210,000 jobs last month. This number is much lower than both October’s figure (546,000 gains) and the market expectations (MarketWatch’s analysts forecasted 573,000 added jobs). So, it’s a huge blow to those optimistic about the US economy.

    weak november payrolls won t help gold grafika numer 1

    However, this is a huge blow that nobody will care about because the disappointing payrolls were accompanied by a big decline in unemployment. As the chart above shows, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.4 percentage points, from 4.6% in October to 4.2% in November.

    What’s more, the unemployment rate declined simultaneously with the increases in both the labor-force participation rate (from 61.6% to 61.8%) and the employment-to-population ratio (from 58.8% to 59.2%). This means that the reduction in unemployment was genuine and rather not a result of dropping out from the labor market.

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    Additionally, wage inflation has slowed down from 4.84% in October to 4.8% in November, remaining below expectations, which could slightly ease inflationary concerns. Last but not least, after revisions, employment in September and October combined was reported to be 82,000 higher than previously indicated, and the monthly job growth has averaged 555,000 so far this year. Therefore, even a weak November doesn’t change the fact that 2021 marked a great improvement in the US labor market.

     

    Implications for Gold

    What does the November employment report imply for the gold market? The nonfarm payrolls disappointed, but it’s not enough to stop the Fed from accelerating the pace of tapering its quantitative easing, especially given the significant reduction in the unemployment rate. So, the hawkish revolution won’t be stopped. It may even be strengthened, as a big decline in unemployment brings us closer to “full employment” and meeting the criteria for hiking interest rates.

    This is, of course, not good news for the gold bulls. After hearing worries about inflation a few weeks ago, the Fed managed to calm investors. They’ve believed that Powell and his colleagues would take the inflationary threat seriously. Markets now expect a speed-up in the pace of tapering in December and as much as three interest rates hikes in 2022 (there are even investors who bet on seven hikes by the end of the next year!).

    However, there is a silver lining here. With the unemployment rate at 4.2%, the potential for further improvement is rather limited. And when a new upward trend begins, we will have rising unemployment rate and high inflation at the same time. Such conditions create stagflation, which would take gold higher.

    This is still a song of the future, though. Let’s focus on the recent past: gold prices increased slightly on Friday (December 3, 2021). Although the London P.M. Fix hardly changed (see the chart below), the New York price rebounded to about $1,783 on Friday from $1,769 the day before. However, it doesn’t change the fact that gold remains stuck in a sideways trend below $1,800, as concerns about inflation exist along with expectations of a more aggressive Fed tightening cycle.

    weak november payrolls won t help gold grafika numer 2

    Luckily for gold, despite its hawkish rhetoric, the US central bank will remain behind the inflation curve. The cautious, dovish policy is simply too tempting, as hitting the brakes too hard could trigger a financial crisis and a recession. With the CPI annual rate above 6%, the Fed should have already hiked the federal funds rate instead of waiting until Q2 2022. And even with three 25-basis point hikes, real interest rates will remain deeply in negative territory, which should be supportive of gold prices.

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    Arkadiusz Sieron, PhD
    Sunshine Profits: Effective Investment through Diligence & Care


    Arkadiusz Sieron

    Arkadiusz Sieron

    Hi, my name is Arkadiusz Sieroń. Call me a liar, but I am writing about the precious metals thanks to Arthur Laffer, Alan Greenspan, John Keynes and Fredrich Hayek. Really! Would you like to know how these economists, some of whom have been dead for a long time, triggered my adventure with gold? When I was in high school, I took part in the Entrepreneurship Olympic, one of the biggest thematic competitions for pupils from secondary schools. During my preparations, I studied an academic textbook, in which I came across a Laffer curve. Eureka! If the tax revenues are the same at low and high tax rates, the government should lower them! I did not win the competition, but I achieved much more. I decided to become an economist! And I loved the idea of small government and economic freedom since that very moment. After graduating from high school, I moved to the capital. I was very excited, as I started to study economics at the best economics university in the country. However, the professors disappointed me very quickly. Why? They all were statists, supporting extensive government intervention and fiat currencies. Gold? It is a barbarous relic! Have you not read Lord Keynes? I was very depressed. I even considered giving up my studies in economics and enrolling in the Philosophy Faculty! You can see now that I was really desperate. When I was contemplating nothingness and vanity of vanities, a few of my classmates lent me a handful of fascinating books, such as Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. I also discovered the publications of the Austrian economists who supported the idea of the gold standard. It sounded crazy in the 21th century, but it was inspiring. I rediscovered the sense of studying economics. I continued my studies and one day I read these words: “Gold and economic freedom are inseparable”. Try guess who wrote them. Don’t give up, try once again. Don’t know? Alan Greenspan. Shocking, right? This is a quote from his “Gold and Economic Freedom”, an article published in 1966. Several years before he became the Fed Chair, and several more before the real estate bubble, that he helped to pump, up burst. Quite ironic, don’t you think? Both his essay and the Great Recession (and the accompanying bull market) motivated me to study investment portfolio management and the precious metals. I became a certified Investment Adviser very soon and I started to work for the biggest pension fund in the country. My corporate career seemed to be very promising. However, I quickly discovered that the company invested most of the participants’ funds into Treasuries or shares of the big state companies. And they didn’t even want to hear about investing in precious metals. I quit. I found a shelter at the university, as a Ph.D. candidate and – after a defense of my thesis about certain negative consequences of inflation (i.e. the Cantillon effect) – as an Assistant Professor. I was finally free to study economics, freedom, and gold. The more I read about gold, the more I was terrified. Most of the so-called experts who write about the precious metals, don’t have any idea about the subject they discuss. They treat gold as a mere commodity. Or they claim that gold is either worthless as it does not bring any yield or that its price should always rise. I was really let down by the state of understanding of the gold market among the analysts and investors. But I could not do too much. Until the sun shined down on me. I got a job offer at Sunshine Profits. I didn’t hesitate a second and accepted it, although many professors discouraged me: “You are a scholar, focus on science and do not write silly newsletters about bullion" -they advised me. But I did not listen to them, as they clearly didn’t understand the nature of gold. It is not a barbarous relic, it is the longest used money in history, and a clinking witness of human civilization. Gold is the asset, which used to serve as the safe- haven and portfolio diversifier for investors from the entire world for years. I wanted to study its properties and to share with my knowledge with people who do not have time for that. I wanted to help investors to better understand fundamentals of the gold market and improve their investment decisions. I’m happy that I can do that at Sunshine Profits. I’m really proud to be a member of our team and provide investors with high quality investment analyses about the gold market.


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