Pascha, Paradise and People
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Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts
Friday, January 30, 2026
Gold Corrects and Silver Crashes
What a difference a day makes. Gold off 8% and Silver down ~30%. Both still up YTD. Not terribly surprised. Both metals were basically going parabolic. But the catalyst for the bull market in precious metals remains. Trump is still going to be president for another three years.
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Goldman Sachs was right.
Last month they predicted that gold could hit $5,400 by the end of 2026. It closed today at $5,474/oz. (11 months early).
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Sunday, January 25, 2026
What is going on in the financial markets?
Ray Dalio warns that the monetary order is breaking down, leaving us with a terrible choice: ‘Do you print money or let a debt crisis happen?
Just as a quick historical note; the last time the US had a financial panic that did not center on the stock market, was way back in 1893. And it was U G L Y.
Thursday, January 15, 2026
Trump’s role in the staggering rise of the world’s oldest currency
In the past year, the dollar has undergone its worst overall devaluation since the 1970s. At the same time, the price of gold has surged nearly 75pc to record highs.
No commodity acts better than gold as insurance against inflation, financial instability and geopolitical turmoil.
Call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome” if you like, but financial markets are increasingly betting on all three.
Almost everything the Trump White House does seems deliberately designed to undermine the dollar, last weekend’s renewed attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve being only the latest example.
None of it makes any sense, including the almost certainly hollow promise to cap credit card charges.
Price controls? Milton Friedman will be turning in his grave.
Read the rest here.
Monday, January 12, 2026
‘Sell America’ trade: Dollar drops, gold surges as Trump’s Fed pressure campaign raises fears about U.S. system
Precious metals are jumping to records. The U.S dollar is dropping. Stocks are choppy.
Monday is all about the “Sell America” trade after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s bombshell announcement that he’s under criminal investigation — which market participants see as a sign of President Donald Trump’s interest in stripping away the central bank’s political independence.
“This is unambiguously risk off,” said Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI.
Guha said a so-called “Sell America” trade could play out similarly to what was seen in April, when the stock market cratered after Trump first announced his plan for broad and steep tariffs. Global investors will place a higher risk-premium on U.S. assets, while safe-haven trades like gold should take a leg up as a response to the turmoil, he said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 500 points at one point in morning trading, while the U.S. dollar index shed 0.3%. But the popular safe-haven trades of gold and silver surged to all-time highs in the session.
“Clearly, the market doesn’t like it,” Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told CNBC on Monday.
Read the rest here.
Monday, December 22, 2025
Gold and Silver Rise Sharply
Gold and silver prices soared to new highs on Monday.
Gold was last seen at a record $4,445.8 per ounce while spot gold was last trading at $4,414.99. Prices are up nearly 70% since the start of the year.
The metal has soared this year, smashing consecutive price records as risk assets lost ground. Gold is typically viewed as a safe haven asset in times of economic or geopolitical turbulence...
Read the rest here.
Thursday, October 09, 2025
Monday, September 01, 2025
Gold Posts New Record
Gold currently trading at ~$3,566 /oz amidst expectations of the Fed cutting interest rates (whether by choice or under presidential coercion), and the risks of a weaker dollar and higher inflation.
Update: Gold closed at $3,599 /oz.
Monday, March 31, 2025
Friday, March 21, 2025
Worth a read...
Facing a suddenly hostile US; Europe turns to Germany and Berlin steps up...
Meanwhile Russia continues its campaign of disruption...
Moscow and Beijing rejoice at the imminent demise of Radio Free Europe and VOA...
Four conservative columnists discuss Trump's enduring popularity on the right...
On the huge run-up in gold...
(I agree in part, but also think there is more to the story. Gold has always marched to the beat of its own drum. Geopolitical and US specific political tensions, and the out of control US debt are all contributing. Also there has been a voracious demand for gold coming from other parts of the world, notably China.)
Europe sees opportunity in Trump’s economic chaos...
The weird world of anti-vaxxers...
Tesla owners are trading in their EVs at record levels...
How Republicans Learned to Love High Prices...
Saturday, February 01, 2025
Trump Launches Trade War with China, Mexico & Canada (JP Morgan Chase Stockpiles Gold)
President Donald Trump has signed tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. from Canada, Mexico and China, the White House said Saturday, raising the risk of a trade war with America’s closest trading partners and threatening to drive up prices on everything from cars to avocados.
It is unclear when the tariffs will take effect.
Canadian energy products would have a lower tariff rate of 10%.
Trump said he was imposing the tariffs because he claimed the countries were allowing fentanyl to come into the U.S. More than 107,000 people died from drug overdose in 2023, with nearly 70% of those deaths from opioids, including fentanyl. Trump also said the tariffs were in response to a trade deficit between the U.S. and the three countries because the U.S. imports more from them than it exports.
Economists across the political spectrum expect tariffs to increase what consumers pay for a range of goods, including vehicles, electronics, produce and lumber. Tariffs are paid by companies importing goods into the U.S., similar to a tax.
Read the rest here
Monday, October 21, 2024
Trump tax plans could exempt 93 million from income taxes
Former President Donald Trump’s tax reform ideas could offer total or partial income tax exemptions to roughly 93.2 million Americans, a meaningful chunk of the U.S. electorate, according to CNBC’s analysis of several estimates.
As part of his economic pitch to voters, Trump has floated a sweeping tax overhaul, including a slate of income tax breaks.
So far, the Republican presidential nominee has officially proposed eliminating income tax on tips and Social Security benefits, along with overtime pay. And last week, in an interview on the sports media site OutKick, Trump said he would consider tax exemptions for firefighters, police officers, military personnel and veterans.
These exemptions are part of Trump’s larger vision to transition away from the income tax system and replace it with the revenue he says would be generated by his hardline tariff proposals.
“In the old days when we were smart, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said at a sit-down with voters in New York on Friday for “Fox & Friends.” “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying.”
Trump has pledged to impose a 20% universal tariff on all imports from all countries with a specific 60% rate for Chinese imports.
Tax experts reject the notion that tariff revenue could offset the losses incurred by eliminating income taxes.
“The math doesn’t work out,” Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, told CNBC.
He said Trump’s tariffs would raise approximately $3.8 trillion over the next decade, far less than the roughly $33 trillion of estimated revenue generated by income taxes over the same period.
Given that tariffs are paid by U.S. importers and those costs have historically been passed on to consumers, Trump’s strategy appears to be based around a notion of replacing income tax revenue with a kind of invisible sales tax.
Tariffs, much like sales tax and other point-of-sale costs, tend to have the biggest impact on low-income consumers, for whom the amounts represent proportionately larger slices of their monthly budgets.
If implemented, Trump’s income tax exemptions could affect tens of millions of taxpayers.
Roughly 68 million Americans receive Social Security benefits each month, according to the Social Security Administration. And in 2023, about 4 million workers were in tipped jobs, according to an estimate from Yale University’s Budget Lab.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs approximated in March 2023 that there were 18.6 million living veterans. There are 1.3 million active-duty military personnel, according to the Department of Defense. And there are 800,000 sworn law enforcement officers and roughly 500,000 paid firefighters.
Taken together, these reforms could leave about 93.2 million people off the hook for at least a portion, if not all, of their income taxes.
That accounts for about 38% of the 244 million Americans eligible to vote in 2024.
Read the rest here.
Trump's economic plan in summary: Eliminate income tax for most people, levy a 20%+ tariff (sales tax) on all imports which will start a trade war with pretty much the entire word and replace about 10% of the lost tax revenue in the best case scenario, precipitating an explosion in inflation and the national debt.
On which note, gold is currently trading at ~$2,745.00/oz.
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Is gold safer than U.S. Treasury bonds as federal debt keeps soaring?
Backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government, U.S. Treasuries bonds have long been viewed as the gold standard in safe investments.
In times of uncertainty, economic downturns, or full-blown crises, investors have flocked to Treasuries as a haven. But what if actual gold is the new gold standard for a safe investment?
Analysts at Bank of America asked that question in a note on Wednesday, explaining that the outlook for U.S. debt is bullish for the precious metal.
With debt as a share of GDP set to break record highs in the coming years, the Treasury Department has to sell more and more bonds to investors, who may demand higher yields. And when yields rise, the price of bonds on the secondary market falls.
That has helped weaken the historic correlation between bond yields and gold prices. While lower rates are still bullish for gold, which doesn't pay interest or dividends, higher rates don't necessarily put pressure on bullion anymore, BofA said, maintaining a gold price target of $3,000 per ounce.
"Indeed, with lingering concerns over US funding needs and their impact on the US Treasury market, the yellow metal may become the ultimate perceived safe haven asset," analysts wrote.
Gold has been on a tear recently, with prices up more than 30% so far this year, topping $2,700 per ounce for the first time ever this past week.
That's even as bond yields have rebounded since the Federal Reserve's first rate cut last month, while fresh budget data showed that the deficit was $1.8 trillion for the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30. Meanwhile, the interest expense alone on U.S. debt was $950 billion, more than defense spending and up 35% from the prior due mostly to higher rates.
There is no relief in sight as the deficit will expand under either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, though less so under the Democrat, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
"Indeed, rising funding needs, debt servicing costs and concerns over the sustainability of fiscal policy may well mean that gold prices could increase, if rates move up," BofA said.
With the supply of U.S. debt poised to continue surging, concerns have grown about demand and whether investors will keep absorbing more Treasury bonds.
That provides a strong incentive to central banks around the world keep diversifying their reserves away from U.S. debt and toward gold, BofA added.
Read the rest here.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Monday, April 08, 2024
Gold Hits Record Highs
Gold prices hit a record high for a seventh straight session on Monday, fueled by central bank purchases and geopolitical tensions, while strong economic data failed to dull bullion’s allure.
U.S. gold futures gained less than 0.1% to $2,346.90. Spot gold was just below flat at $2,328.28 per ounce, after hitting a record high of $2,353.79 earlier in the session.
China’s central bank added 160,000 troy ounces of gold to its reserves in March, it said. Turkey, India, Kazakhstan, and some eastern European countries have also been buying gold this year.
Read the rest here.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Crypto’s gold standard claims are fading fast
The US-focused shakeout in financial markets has at least given us clarity on one point: bitcoin is not “digital gold” or a “store of value”, to mention two grand claims made about the cryptocurrency when its price was going up.
At $37,000, the late-afternoon level on Tuesday, bitcoin has fallen by 22% since the start of January and by 45% since recording an all-time high in early November. The crypto crew may have convoluted explanations for this setback, but the simplest one is best: bitcoin has always primarily been an instrument for pure speculation; when high-risk assets are out of favour, it will be clobbered.
If anything, bitcoin is behaving like a souped-up proxy for the technology-heavy Nasdaq index in the US, down 14% since the start of 2022. So the parallel claim about “uncorrelated returns” doesn’t stack up either.
Meanwhile actual gold, a real store of value on the evidence of a few thousand years, has been doing roughly what it is supposed to do during an inflation scare: it has fluttered sideways to gently upwards over the past few months.
None of which precludes the possibility that bitcoin will rally when risk-taking appetites recover. But, if that happens, please let’s not hear a reheated version of the thesis (pushed by a Goldman Sachs strategist, bizarrely, only a few weeks ago) that bitcoin is competing with gold in “the store of value market” and thus could hit $100,000 if it grabs a 50% share.
Come on, cryptocurrencies are not playing on the same pitch, asset-wise, as gold – and one doubts they ever will.
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Palantir bought $50 million in gold bars in August
While some companies such as Tesla are diversifying into bitcoin, data analytics software company Palantir is betting on gold. Palantir bought $50 million in gold bars in August, the company disclosed in its latest earnings statement.
The move reflects a growing company stashing cash in an unconventional asset in response to economic uncertainty spurred by the coronavirus pandemic and governments’ response to it.
Read the rest here.
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Bitcoin gets hammered as China issues warning to investors
Bitcoin fell below $37,000 for the first time in over three months on Wednesday, continuing a major sell-off that began a week ago.
The digital currency was down 20% in the last 24 hours, according to Coinbase. The cryptocurrency hit an intraday low of around $36,189 at 7:30 a.m. ET. It was the lowest level since early February. Bitcoin is down more than 30% in the last week, according to Coinbase.
That means bitcoin has now erased all its gains following Tesla’s announcement that it would purchase $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. It’s also down about 44% since hitting a record high of $64,829 in mid-April.
Negative news over the past week has dampened sentiment for bitcoin.
On May 12, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric carmaker had suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin, citing environmental concerns over the so-called computational “mining” process. This is where high-powered computers are used to solve complex mathematical puzzles to enable transactions using bitcoin.
Musk’s comments caused over $300 billion to be wiped off the entire cryptocurrency market that day.
Read the rest here.
In related news; JP Morgan believes large institutional investors are losing confidence in crypto-currencies and are moving into gold as a hedge against inflation and other potential issues that could weaken the dollar.
Details here. (Paywall)
Friday, September 25, 2020
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