Neither Inflation nor the Fed Moves Gold| FXMAG.COM

Inflation spiked 7.1% in December, and the Fed is likely to raise interest rates already in March. Still, gold remains uninterested.

“Inflation is too high,” admitted Lael Brainard during her nomination hearing in the Senate for the Vice Chair of the Fed. You don’t say, Governor Obvious! Indeed, the latest BLS report on inflation shows that consumer inflation rose 0.5% in December on a monthly basis, after rising 0.8% in the preceding month. The core CPI rate increased 0.6%, following a 0.6-percent increase in November.

The situation is actually worse: inflation is not merely high – it’s high and still rising. As the chart below shows, the annual, seasonally adjusted CPI inflation rate spiked 7.1%, the highest move since February 1982.

However, 40 years ago, inflation was coming down, and now, it is still accelerating. Inflation has been in a clear upward trend since May 2020, and getting worse month after month since August 2021 (practically, since November 2020, when we skip a short moderation in summer 2021), as the chart below shows.

What is really disturbing is that core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, spiked 5.5%, the highest since February 1991. It shows that inflation has moved deeply into the economy. It’s not a phenomenon caused merely by soaring energy prices – we are witnessing widespread, general inflation that covers practically all prices. For example, the shelter subindex, which is the biggest component of the CPI and is much less volatile than energy or food, rose 4.2% in December, the highest since February 2007, as the chart below shows.

Although inflation could calm down somewhat in the first quarter of 2022 or even peak amid the spread of Omicron and the recent peak in the Producer Price Index, it’s not likely to disappear quickly. Its negative impact on the economy is beginning to be felt more and more. For instance, retail sales plunged 1.9% in December, much worse than the forecasted decline of 0.1%. The drop was caused partially by surging prices that took a big bite out of spending.

Implications for Gold

What does rising inflation imply for the gold market? Well, theoretically, the yellow metal loves high and accelerating inflation, so it should shine under the current conditions. Last year, gold didn’t perform spectacularly, but it has recently managed to rise above $1,820, as the chart below shows. I wouldn’t draw too far-reaching conclusions on this basis, but at least that’s something.

Inflation has been accompanied by an expanding economy last year and, more recently, also by the Fed’s more hawkish rhetoric. For a shamefully long time, the Fed kept refusing to deal with inflation. However, Powell and his colleagues have finally awoken. They’ve already accelerated the pace of tapering asset purchases and signaled successfully to the markets that they’ll likely start raising interest rates as early as March. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, the odds of a hike in the federal funds rate have risen from 46.8% last month to above 90% now. Hence, the lift-off is almost certain.

The prospects of more hawkish monetary policy and the sooner start of a tightening cycle should be negative for the yellow metal, but gold didn’t care too much about a more aggressive Fed. This is encouraging, but the risk of normalization of real interest rates remains. It might also be the case that neither high inflation nor a hawkish Fed is able to shake gold out of the sideways trend right now. Let’s be patient – it might be just the silence before the storm.

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

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.