Gold is often shunned by investors
in favor of stocks.
As Warren Buffett has noted, Gold doesn’t do anything
“but look at you.” It doesn’t pay a dividend or produce cash flow.
However, the fact of the matter is that Gold has dramatically outperformed
the stock market for the better part of 40 years.
I say 40 years because there is no point comparing Gold to stocks during
periods in which Gold was pegged to world currencies. Most of the analysis I
see comparing the benefits of owning Gold to stocks goes back to the early 20th
century.
However Gold was pegged to global currencies up until 1967. Stocks
weren’t. Comparing the two during this time period is just bad analysis.
However, once the Gold peg officially ended with France dropping it in
1967, the precious metal has outperformed both the Dow and the S&P 500 by
a massive margin.
See for yourself… the below chart is in normalized terms courtesy of Bill
King’s The King Report.
According to King, Gold has risen 37.43 fold since 1967. That is more than
twice the performance of the Dow over the same time period (18.45 fold).
So much for the claim that stocks are a better investment than Gold
long-term.
Indeed, once Gold was no longer pegged to world currencies there was only
a single period in which stocks outperformed the precious metal. That period
was from 1997-2000 during the height of the Tech Bubble (the single biggest
stock market bubble in over 100 years).
In simple terms, as a long-term investment, Gold has arguably been the
single best passive investment of the last 40+ years.
Many investors argue that Gold has no intrinsic value. I disagree with
this assessment as it does not consider the nature of the financial system.
Let’s compare Gold to the US Dollar.
Every asset in the financial system trades based on relative value.
Ultimately, this value is denominated in US Dollars because the Dollar is the
reserve currency of the world.
However, even the US Dollar itself trades based on relative value.
Remember the Dollar is merely a sheet of linen and cotton that is printed by
the Fed and is backed by the full faith and credit of the Unites States.
In this sense, the Dollar’s value is derived from the confidence investors
that the US will honor its debts.
A second item to consider is the fact that the Dollar’s value today also
derived from the Fed’s money printing. Indeed, a Dollar today, is worth only
5% of a Dollar’s value from the early 20th century because the Fed
has debased the currency.
As a result of this the world has adjusted to this change in relative
“value” resulting in a Dollar buying less today than it did 100 years ago.
In this sense, Gold’s value is derived from investors’ faith in the
Financial System (ultimately backstopped by the Dollar) and the Fed’s
actions.
Gold also moves based on investors’ confidence in the system. If
investors’ are afraid that the system is under duress (meaning that they have
little confidence in the Dollar-based financial system) then they perceive
Gold has having a higher value.
Similarly, if the Fed prints Dollars by the billions, Gold is perceived as
having a higher value relative to the Dollar.
Thus, Gold does not have any less intrinsic value than the US Dollar does.
In that regard we can price it relative to the Fed’s actions and to the fear
of systemic risk to get an assessment of its true value.
This concludes this article, to pick up a FREE Investment report on a
secret backdoor play on Gold titled, The Gold Mountain: how to buy
Gold at $273 per ounce, swing by http://phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/special-reports.html
Best Regards
Phoenix Capital Research
