Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Gold Model Still Rockin'

Updated version (the charts only) of my October 2010 post On the Value of Gold:

I've been a gold bull for a while now (see my post Ready to Ride the Golden Bubble from March 2009), but my rationale was more behavioral in nature. But now, Crossing Wall Street has a fascinating post on a possible model (or at least a framework) for the price of gold, which indicates we are nowhere near the peak.

I highly recommend reading the full post as it provides a nice background for why the model may work, but to the magic formula:

Whenever the dollar’s real short-term interest rate is below 2%, gold rallies. Whenever the real short-term rate is above 2%, the price of gold falls. Gold holds steady at the equilibrium rate of 2%. It’s my contention that this was what the Gibson Paradox was all about since the price of gold was tied to the general price level.
Now here’s the kicker: there’s a lot of volatility in this relationship. According to my backtest, for every one percentage point real rates differ from 2%, gold moves by eight times that amount per year. So if the real rates are at 1%, gold will move up at an 8% annualized rate. If real rates are at 0%, then gold will move up at a 16% rate (that’s been about the story for the past decade). Conversely, if the real rate jumps to 3%, then gold will drop at an 8% rate.
I wanted to see for myself, so I took Eddy's model and updated real T-Bill rates with historical T-Bills rates and historical CPI figures going back to 1951, then sized it so the output matched the current price of gold (this was not resized in the updated post).

And while he is not trying to explain 100% of gold's movement, but rather the factors that drive that movement... the result in itself is rather impressive to say the least.



Log Scale


His six takeaways (summarized):
  • Gold isn’t tied to inflation, but rather tied to low real rates (not always one in the same)
  • When real rates are low, the price of gold can rise very, very rapidly
  • When real rates are high, gold can fall very, very quickly
  • Gold should not (and does not) have a long-term relationship with equities
  • Low rates are likely to last for a long period of time
  • Gold price is political; central bankers can crush the price if desired (i.e. raise rates)
Data Source: Measuring Worth

6 comments:

  1. Love your blog and the fact you are keeping it going again!

    As to the last point (capital wasted) - someone sells, someone always buys, no? If the price would tank, no capital would be "released" from gold stocks, it would just be destroyed as gold's "market cap" declines.

    I find gold interesting to watch, but I am reluctant to buy it.

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  2. Thanks... didn't mean to keep that in (the conversation will wait for another day, but I did respond to that in the original). Removing for now...

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  3. Interesting model. Could you go into a bit more detail on your calculations? Did you use the 3-month bill rate and annualize it? Thanks. Feel free to email me at: seth2077@yahoo.com

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  4. Seth- Go to the original post as I included a link to a spreadsheet back then.

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  5. The implications of this model are a significant increase in the price of gold give the announcement of target rates of 0-25bps and assuming inflation of 1-3%, ie. negative real rates likely for the next 2 years.

    This would put the growth of Gold at north of 8% and more likely at 16-20% annually for the next two years, ie Gold at 2630 in 2 yrs.

    I would really appreciate seeing your spreadsheet as I am wrestling with how to get the real rates.

    sc

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  6. How do you calculate the real rates?

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