Only if it doesn't get any more painful short-term perhaps.
The yellow metal nearly sent traders to sleep over the first 5 months of 2018...
All it has done since then is lose another $50 per ounce...
Lucky for pundits however, gold investing is never about the metal.
Gold doesn't pay any interest or post any quarterly numbers. Barely one-tenth of annual demand comes from industrial use.
So for investors trying to decide which way they think prices will go, gold is really about everything else.
And away from the bullion market right now, you'll find plenty to think on.
Stock Market up almost 40% since the Election, with 7 Trillion Dollars of U.S. value built throughout the economy. Lowest unemployment rate in many decades, with Black & Hispanic unemployment lowest in History, and Female unemployment lowest in 21 years. Highest confidence ever!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 11, 2018
The Donald's not wrong.
Things could hardly get any better.
US consumer sentiment, for instance, has only been this high twice before on the University of Michigan's survey series.
Last time people were this jolly was briefly in 2004...just as the housing bubble neared its peak.
Before that was across the last 3 years of the 20th Century...back when the DotCom Bubble peaked and central banks everywhere started selling their gold reserves.
Claims for US jobless benefits are meantime setting new 44-year lows...
Here in the UK a similar story.
More people are now in work than ever before.
Spending at the shops leapt last month. People are so positive, demand for garden furniture and barbecues
is surging in Scotland!
It's not just private households who see only blue sky and sun-kissed evenings ahead.
...with more money owed than ever before.
That in itself isn't a problem. People need credit for all kinds of sound reasons.
To build a family and a home. To start a business. To expand their output and marketing.
But problems start if they cannot make the repayments.
And this new-record mountain of debt has been built using the lowest interest rates in history.
The margin for error, in other words, has never been smaller. Borrowers have needed the cheapest loans in history to make the sums work.
Household incomes, meantime, have struggled to get ahead of even the tame inflation being reported by official government data.
And out of that income, the amount of money people are saving for the future has collapsed both in the US, sinking
back to 2005's record lows...just before the housing bust turned into the global banking crisis.
The real trouble, however, is building in those corporate debt markets.
Because while US businesses have raised new record levels of debt, they have also enjoyed record-high corporate earnings.
Those earnings are now
trying to plateau if not retreat. And after a near 10-year bull market in stocks – and the third longest recession-free economic run in US history – 2018's record-high equities look priced for perfection with very little room for manoeuvre.
The pin for this bubble?
Rising interest rates are the usual suspects. Most of the world is trying to keep a lid on the cost of borrowing, but the US Fed looks set to keep raising the cost of borrowing Dollars.
Over-borrowed and over-reliant on foreign funds, they are now stuck trying to boost growth with cheap money at home, while trying to defend their fast-falling currencies on the foreign exchange market.
...forcing them to try and keep boosting domestic demand with cheap money while the No.1 source of all liquidity slowly tightens the tap.
So when will the Fed stop?
Raising interest rates is being sold as a sign that economic growth can now look after itself, because consumers and business need less support from the central bank. Inflation is also rising, or so all the indicators are flashing.
But the world is priced to rely on near-zero rates. So removing that support is unlikely to end well for borrowers, never mind their lenders.
...and it starts slashing interest rates again to try and stem the recession.
Buying gold bullion or other precious metals isn't guaranteed to get you through that downturn when it comes. Not even the immutable metal is sure to do well in the economic and financial chaos to which the US Fed is now booking our tickets.
But physical bullion is very unlikely to stay boring.
Least of all when other investors realise just how much they could lose when this debt bubble bursts, and borrowers stop repaying their loans.
