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Another 4 Years of Gold’s Tricky Romance With Jay

Another 4 Years of Gold’s Tricky Romance With Jay | FXMAG.COM
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“Do you love me?”, asked gold. “Of course, my dear”, replied Jay, but his thoughts were with others: asset purchases tapering and interest rate hikes.

“It’s complicated” – this is how many people answer questions about their romantic lives. The relationship between gold and Jerome Powell is also not a clear one. As you know, in November, President Biden announced that he would reappoint Powell for the second term as the Fed Chair. It means that gold will have to live with Jerome under the same roof for another four years.

To say that gold didn’t like it is to say nothing. The yellow metal snapped and left the cozy living room of $1,850, slamming the door loudly. In less literary expressions, its price plunged from above $1,860 on November 19 to $1,782 on November 24, 2021, as the chart below shows.

another 4 years of gold s tricky romance with jay grafika numer 1

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The impulsive gold’s reaction to Powell’s renomination resulted from its failed dream about a love affair with Lael Brainard. She was considered a leading contender to replace Powell. The contender that would be more dovish and, thus, more supportive of gold prices.

However, is a hawkish dove a hawk? Is Powell really a hawk? Even if more hawkish than Brainard, he still orchestrated an unprecedentedly accommodative monetary policy in response to the pandemic-related economic crisis. It was none other than Powell who started to cut interest rates in 2019, a year before the epidemic outbreak. It was he who implemented an inflation-averaging regime that allowed inflation to run above the target. Right now, it’s also Powell who claims that the current high inflation is transitory, although it’s clear for almost everyone else that it’s more persistent. I wouldn’t call Powell a hawk then. He is rather a dove in a hawk’s clothing.

So, gold doesn’t have to suffer under Powell’s second term as the Fed Chair. Please take a look at the chart below, which shows gold’s performance in the period of 2017-2021. As you can see, the yellow metal gained about 34% during Powell’s first term as the chair of the Federal Reserve that started in February 2018 (or 40% since Trump’s November 2017 nomination of the Fed).

another 4 years of gold s tricky romance with jay grafika numer 2

Not bad! Actually, gold performed much better back then than under Yellen’s term as the Fed Chair. During her tenure, which took place in 2014-2018, the yellow metal was traded sideways, remaining generally in a corridor between $1,100-$1,300.

another 4 years of gold s tricky romance with jay grafika numer 3

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I’m not saying that Yellen despised gold, while Powell loves it. My point is that gold’s performance during the tenures of Fed Chairs varies along with changes in the macroeconomic environment in which they act and the monetary stance they adopt. Gold suffered strongly until December 2015, when Yellen finally started hiking the federal funds rate. It then rebounded, only to struggle again in 2018 amid an aggressive tightening cycle. However, at the end of that year it started to rally due to a dovish shift within the Fed, and, of course, in a lagged response to unprecedented fiscal and monetary actions later in 2020.

I have bad and good news here. The former is that the macroeconomic environment during Powell’s second term could be more inflationary, demanding more hawkish actions. The Fed has already started tapering of its quantitative easing, and bets are accumulating that it could start hiking interest rates somewhere around mid-2022. What’s more, the continuation of Powell’s leadership ensures more stability and provides markets with more certainty about what to expect from the Fed in the coming years. This is bad news for safe-haven assets such as gold.

Last but not least, the composition of the FOMC is going to shift toward the hawkish side. This is because some strong doves, such as Daly and Evans, are out, while some notable hawks, such as George, Mester (and also Bullard), are among the voting members in 2022. Gold may, therefore, find itself under downward pressure next year, especially in its first half.

On the other hand, the current FOMC expresses clearly dovish bias. With mammoth public debt and elevated asset prices, aggressive tightening would simply be very risky from a financial and political point of view. So, the Fed is likely to generally remain behind the curve. By the way, Biden not only reappointed Powell for the second term as Fed Chair, but he also appointed Brainard as Vice-Chair. We also can’t exclude that Biden agreed to Powell’s second term only if he conducts “appropriate” monetary policy.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren once called Powell “a dangerous man.” Well, in a way, it’s true, as powerful people can be dangerous. However, history shows that Powell doesn’t have to be a threat to gold. After all, he is not a hawk in the mold of Paul Volcker, but merely a hawkish dove, or a dove that will have to normalize the crisis monetary policy and curb inflation.

In the upcoming months, gold may struggle amid prospects of more interest rates hikes and likely strengthened hawkish rhetoric from the Fed. However, precious metals investors often sell the rumor and buy the fact. So, when the US central bank finally delivers them, better times may come for the yellow metal, and gold and Jay could live happily ever after. The End.

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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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