For the fervent follower of Gold, to say it’s been “superb” year-to-date may seem at first blush an excessively exaggerated stretch, given the above panel’s showing us that price is but one point above where it was this time a year ago — and to just be in sync with currency debasement — ought be at 2716 rather than at yesterday’s (Friday’s) settle of 1330. Indeed to some, “paltry” might appear a more proper adjective, even as this is Gold’s highest weekly settle since mid-September a year ago.
Still, let’s go inside the numbers. Through August and a day in 2017, Gold is +15.4%. For the 45 years going back through 1975, this is Gold’s eighth-best January through August percentage performance, and the fourth-best like performance millennium-to-date. Considering the drudging Gold has endured these past six years, not to mention its ridiculously low valuation, we’d say this year’s performance-to-date is superb.
Further, given our quip that “change is an illusion whereas price is the truth”, let’s take a look at this present 1330 level: it is but 47 points (-3.4%) below last year’s high up at Base Camp 1377. And as regular readers know, from 1377 up to the 1600s is a fairly unfettered path. That’s pretty superb as well.
Fact is, were it not for Copper, it would be Gold sitting atop the year-to-date BEGOS Market Standings with eight months plus one trading day in the books:
Time was, of course, when one referred to the red metal as “Dr. Copper” given its prowess as a leading economic indicator, prior to global demand then softening, in turn relegating Copper to merely a metals-family cousin. But in 2017 with a purported pickup in China’s demand and striking supply concerns, pedal-to-the metal Copper is red-lining its tachometer, in stark negative correlation to our StateSide Economic Barometer. Below with the Baro we’ve also the red line which is the ever-correction less stock market as depicted by the S&P 500 Index from one year ago-to-date:
