10 Reasons to Buy Gold at $1,300.00 an Ounce

1. Technical Breakout

From a technical analysis perspective, there has never been a better time to own or purchase gold. Every tradable asset has what is known as support and resistance. Support is the value by which any asset is assumed safe for buying. This is determined by previous price levels.

When prices reach this level more buyers than sellers step into the market. In the latest leg of the gold bull market, $1,000 has been established as the new floor.

Resistance is the price by which assets cannot move beyond because of an overhang of existing supply in the market. After gold reached $850 an oz. in 1980, those unfortunate buyers at that price level waited 30 years, watching the price of gold fall below $300 an oz. before $850 eventually was taken out.

The price of gold traded briefly in 2008 and 2009 in a range between $725 and $1,025 before rising short-term and long-term trend lines confirmed that the path of least resistance of the price of gold was upward.

2. Undervalued on an Inflation-adjusted Basis

If you calculate the cost of gold from it 1980 high of $850 an oz., on an inflation-adjusted basis, the price of gold today would be $2,250 an oz. At today’s price around $1,318 an oz., gold can increase $900 before it would equal its 1980 high. From there, its price can expand from increase demand.

All assets trade in cycles. Before the end of a cycle an asset becomes overvalued. Likewise, at the beginning of a cycle, an asset has been neglected by its market and is undervalued. Gold, having cleared overhead resistance, is now free to seek its 21st century value; including overshooting that fair value before the cycle ends.

3. A Store of Value

The major stock averages 10-year average annual return is virtually zero. Over the last three years, residential real estate has lost 25% to 50% of its value, depending on the market you’re referencing, yet gold has been up nine of the last ten years. This should continue.

The market meltdown of 2008 nearly destroyed the credit market. Real estate is the most credit dependent asset there is. The Mortgage-Backed Securities market, which provided the liquidity for the mortgage industry has not been repaired. Therefore, a structural cap has been placed on the future value of real estate.

U.S. stocks rose in value in the 1980s and 1990s because of deregulation, loose credit, and undervaluation. The inflationary 1970s made stocks poor investments relative to hard assets. By the beginning of the 1982 secular bull market in stocks, the average market multiple for stocks, the number of times over earnings stocks are bought for was between five and ten. Currently, the P/E (price x earnings) ratio for the S & P 500 Index is 17.08.

4. A Rising Asset in a Rising Asset Class

The soft and hard commodity complexes are on a roll. There are various recessionary and depression levels for many assets here in the U.S. towards home ownership, unemployment, commercial real estate vacancy rates, etc. But demand in Asia (the 21st century center of the universe) and South America is strong and getting stronger, monthly.

Foxconn in China, Apple (AAPL) Computer’s primary supplier recently gave its employees a 66% wage increase following 10 work-related suicides. Average U.S. wages have been flat for 10 years. Russia’s heat wave this summer severely reduced its wheat crop. Palladium, silver, coffee, cotton, wheat, pork bellies, and lean hogs are all up significantly for the year. The emerging market countries were not as leveraged as the west; therefore, their economies rebounded faster from the global recession. Their demands for commodities are driving up prices.

5. Upcoming Currency Devaluation

Last week, the Financial Times reported that Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega said central banks are locked in an “international currency war”. The U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is currently pressuring the Chinese to adjust the Yuan against the dollar. Japan is manipulating the Yen to increase exports. Other exporting countries are deliberately attempting to drive their currency lower to expand their respective domestic exports. Unfortunately, this race to the bottom cannot be won by all.

Europeans fled the Euro this spring after Greece debt problems appeared to be growing. Now, the Euro is surging because Ben Bernanke has all but signaled the availability of QE II or QE Lite after the November elections. The U.S. dollar became the least bad currency in the world and a safe haven. That is changing.

The U.S. economic recovery, which is now forecasted to struggle until 2015, will compel currency debasement by the Feds and compel countries and investors to reexamine their dollar holdings. This will add significant downward pressure on the dollar and upward pressure on the price of Gold.

6. Gold as an Upcoming World Reserve Currency Component

This story ran in Reuters at the end of September:

Dollar to remain world's reserve currency—Lockhart

(Reuters) - The U.S. dollar will remain the world's reserve currency, though some diversification over time is inevitable, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart said on Tuesday.

"It's very far-fetched ... that the dollar will lose much of its position in the near term as a reserve currency," he said in response to an audience question after a speech at the University of the South.

"I do, however, expect a gradual reduction in the dollar's role as the rest of the world diversifies and some new currencies become qualified to be held as a reserve currency," he said.

It’s rumored that discussions are underway by various countries to prepare for when the U.S. dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency. China, Brazil, Russia, and France are in talks, with the aid of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), when the world loses faith in the dollar.

Central banks from around the world have stopped selling their gold. This is a reversal from your normal practice for much of this decade which implies that the value of gold is on the ascent.

Since no single currency has the ability to replace the dollar, a basket of currencies and gold will be created. Until such time, the informal reserve currency has defaulted to gold.

7. A Shift in Supply/Demand

The World Gold Council reported on second-quarter demand rising 36% compared with the second quarter of 2009, to 1,050 metric tons. Investment demand rose 118%, to 534.4 tons, and of that segment, ETF demand represented 291.3 tons, which was a 414% rise over 2009's second quarter.

Worldwide demand for gold is rising. From gold bar dispensing ATM machines at the Frankfort, Germany airport and the Abu Dhabi Emirates Palace Hotel, to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) such as GLD, IAU, PHYS, and SGOL. The U.S. Mint 2009 Ultra High Relief Double Eagle Gold Coin has sold out. However, Thursday evening, the U.S. Mint opened the 2010 American Gold Eagle Proof Coins, Rust was discovered forming on the Bank of Russia’s 2009 "St. George the Conqueror" .999 fine coins.

Domestically, baby boomers will live longer and will need more principal in order to sustain their lifestyle. This will necessitate the need to diversify away from paper assets and into hard assets such as silver and gold as inflation returns.

8. A Momentum Play

The return on gold this year is forcing money managers to throw in the towel and adjust their allocation for the yellow metal. Managers will have the remaining 90 days of 2010 to salvage their portfolio’s return for the year.

The year-to-date return for the S&P 500 Index is 3.8%, the DJIA is 4.9%, the NASDAQ 100 is 8.2%, and the Russell 2000 is 9.6%; while gold is up 22.7%, silver is up 37%, and palladium is up 43.8%. True alpha, and the path of least resistance is precious metals.

9. Betting With the House

For the price of gold to collapse from current levels, congress would need to enact legislation to correct the problems of wasteful spending, high unemployment, an expanding federal debt liability, and sensible tax increases.

The November elections of 2010 are completely irrelevant. Whether it is the Republicans or the Democrats who control Washington DC, the government's inability to correct the problems that persist in today's economy will continue. The price of gold will move higher whether it's gridlock or austerity by the GOP or of fiscal stimulus by the Democrats.

Thomas G. Dolnan’s Barron’s editorial dated October 2 observes:

Even a step in the right direction would face huge opposition. A permanent 10% cut in retirement benefits of all kinds, and the same cut applied to health-care spending, including doctors' and hospital fees, would be worth maybe $150 billion a year. A 10% cut in military spending was worth about $60 billion last year. It could occur automatically if the wars wind down. A 10% cut for everything else the government does except pay interest would be worth about $120 billion.

These would be real cuts from last year's spending, not a reduction from the rate of growth, with allowances for inflation and population growth. But they would take us only a quarter of the way to a balanced budget.

The expiration of the Bush income-tax cuts and restoration of the estate tax would raise about $400 billion a year. The tax hike and the 10% cut together would leave another $700 billion a year to be cut or taxed. Fortunately, that happens to be the advertised cost of the anti-recession programs.

Such spending cuts and tax increases are a reasonable program for national renewal—and for political suicide. So don't ask why candidates aren't proposing spending cuts to balance the budget. Borrowing is so much easier—until no one will lend.

10. The US stock and bond markets are predicting no growth in the future.

The yields on bonds and corporate earnings through cost-cutting informs sober investors that between now and 2015, the U.S. economy will struggle and will be unkind to equities.

Stock rallies are no longer a proxy for economic growth. Stocks can just as easily rise because of a drop in the dollar allows foreign buyers to purchase U.S. stocks at a discount.

Corporate culture, the ego to the stock market’s id, no longer cares about long-term goals and results, when the future is always 90 days away. Therefore, long-term, as we now know it is a contemporaneous creature that is shallow but dangerous. This environment debases paper assets and benefit hard assets. 

The Baby Boomer’s Case for Gold

This summer saw another bifurcated performance by the markets as the current paradox of wealth and economics continues. Trading continued its impersonation of Fay Dunaway’s character Evelyn Mulwray answering Jack Nicholson, an obtuse Los Angeles private detective J.J. Gittes, in the1974 movie classic, Chinatown.

As investors demanded answers about the state of things, likewise as in the movie, the market’s binary answer to the question of recovery or not oscillated between the economy is producing – corporate profits/recession, corporate profits/recession, corporate profits/recession. Both answers are true.

This topography is tricky for Wall Street to navigate. The economy must appear fragile enough to ensure that the two trillion dollars Bush tax-cut is extended while both the market and economy isn’t bad enough to scare off investors. The calculus to suppress the price of gold is even trickier; until it’s time for the price to rocket upward. Meanwhile, the disappearing middle class assumes that their needs are a factor in these equations.

On Labor Day, President Obama announced a tiny $50 Billion long-term infrastructure program to rebuild roads, railways, and runways. Jobs are expected to materialize well after Democrats are expecting historic congressional defeats in the November election chiefly because of a U-3 unemployment rate at 9.6% and rising. The rising U-6 unemployment figure is 16.7%. High unemployment, the reciprocal to high labor cost, is good for businesses bottom line.

The American working class’s raison d’être, ascension to middle class status became an inconvenient pursuit for the application of supply-side economics. These upper deck fans of Gordon Gecko’s brand of parasitic capitalism, also, among some of the highest paid global workers, misses the obvious internal conflict for gleefully embracing the religion of Maximizing Shareholders’ Value (MSV).

Investors and upwardly mobile workers in the last three decades were convinced by politicians and Mad Men particularly that they were not one and the same. Unfortunately, unlike a centrifuge that can separate like densities in a tube, a MSV’s thesis is extracted from today’s well paid workers on the road to prosperity and from their future generations’ standard of living.

Given this environment, baby boomers face a cacophony of advice, a cornucopia of information, and a cavalcade of confusing and contradictory data as they sail into retirement.

Once prudent, now quant post Second World War standards concerning finance and money, inculcated into our middle class formula of ideas and value system, ceased producing acceptable results over the last decade. Regrettably, zero became the average annual return on equities during this period. The return on residential real estate is even worse.

As current interest rates on certificates of deposit stay below 2% and long-term treasury obligations pay below 4%, nominal yields are an insult. Corporate debt such as IBM is being issued a few basis points above its treasury counterpart. Other corporations are contemplating issuing 50 and 100 year maturities as the markets salivate.

This year, the winning income strategy has been a portfolio of dividend paying stocks over bonds. The current risk/reward parameter, in both stocks and bonds, and the premium being offered for such an undertaking, is a disproportionate proposition, whether we recover or sink into a global depression.

We continue to witness Modern Portfolio Theory and the Efficient Market Hypothesis lose its practical value for investors, as we did so in 2008 and 2009.

Furthermore, political gridlock circles the globe as one government after another is challenged by private market forces – hedge funds, principally through Forex and credit spread trading. Irresolute leaders are making shortsighted and timid decisions.

Each passing day takes us farther from a 20th century of calibrated knowable unknowns into a 21st century of mounting unknowable unknowns which historically leads to ad hoc mischief and turmoil.

The appropriate characteristics of gold bullion and precious metals are an imbued antidote to today’s financial crisis and the correct mid-term solution for alternative investments. Yet, gold is constantly ridiculed as a “gold bug” vehicle in the main stream media.

Every financial crisis produces real gold bugs. Eventually, the inflationary 1970’s created more gold bugs faster than Ben Bernanke can print dollars. In time, this will happen again. However, the price level for gold is unremarkable, given the sheer size of the aggregate global money supply of tens of trillions of dollars, even more in outstanding debt, and ubiquitous domestic and global political uncertainty.

Any serious talk about a new global reserve currency, partially containing gold, replacing the US dollar, would implicate a gold price in the five figures range. The ownership of gold today as a core portfolio holding is not only to hedge against inflation, a rise in prices, deflation from credit contraction, but also, hyperinflation, and a collapse in a nation’s currency, to preserve accumulated wealth.

You ask why trust gold now when most financial professionals are opposed to acquiring bullion at current prices? Before reviewing some macroeconomics metrics demonstrating the logic for this decision, ask yourself: why were financial planners parroting in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, that over time all stocks rise in value; did stocks obey their wishes?

Why did stock brokers and investment advisers insist that you never want to be out of the market, as recently as the second quarter of 2008, but by 2009, it was “too late” to get out? In their mind, a “blue chip” bear market would not occur. Few investment professionals could even offer sound portfolio hedging strategies with options, as protection against the unthinkable.

Were you warned by advisers that the AAA ratings from credit rating agencies were being purchased by investment product packagers - euphemistically called credit enhancements - like two-for-one call drinks at happy hour?

Did you discuss the risk from opaque and unsecured packaged investments, be they, the gargantuan publicly traded ones or the bespoke private placements, during the roaring 2000’s by your registered investment advisory firm which had a fiduciary responsibility to work on your behalf?

If you were really fortunate in making money during the 1982-2000 secular bull stock market and your net worth rose in excess of seven figures, then you probably retained a hedge fund for the fee of 2/20 to lose a portion of your principal over the last three years.

Did your mutual fund or variable annuity company recommend dollar cost averaging? What is your net worth now? How often were precious or rare earths metals suggested as an alternative investment as these unloved stepchildren posted profits year after year? Are advisers suggesting bullion and rare earths metals now; at what percentage of your portfolio?

The credit crisis and market meltdown of 2008 has been officially named the Great Recession: to show investors that the event itself was manageable and that the extent of probable damages to the economy and the markets were quantifiable. Both of these conclusions were premature, then, and untrue now.

The carnage inflicted by the swift collapse of the 2003-2008 Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV) gold rush was unlike any market/economic contraction witnessed by contemporary investors. The last financial upheaval of this magnitude experienced by investors was the 1930’s Great Depression. Each event was unique. Mark Twain quipped once “History doesn’t repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes”.

The comparative “rhyming” components between 1929 and 2008 crashes includes the shift in wealth distribution to the top 1%, reckless amounts of leverage, and a underwriting frenzy of securities for fees over an organic economic benefit.

In 1928, the top 1% share of total pre-tax income was 23.9%. In 2007, the percentage was 23.5%. Prior to the 1929 crash, stocks could be margined up to 90%. In 2007, homes could be mortgaged up to 125%, with stated income, alone.

After the First World War, country bonds were issued by Europe, South America, and Asia, sold to everyone by Wall Street, and experienced massive defaults which exacerbated the 1930’s global depression.

In the roaring 2000’s, orgasmic inducing fees overrode prudence, as sublime to ridiculous derivatives were packaged and sold around the world by Wall Street, causing countries such as Iceland, Ireland, and Greece to become nearly insolvent. Yet, in 2009, Wall Street paid out $149 billion in bonuses, roughly 1% of our $13 trillion dollar annual GDP.

Worldwide demand for gold is rising. From gold bar dispensing machines at the Frankfort, Germany airport and the Abu Dhabi Emirates Palace Hotel, to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) such as GLD and SGOL.

The US Mint 2009 Ultra High Relief Double Eagle Gold Coin has sold out. Rust was discovered forming on the Bank of Russia’s 2009 "St. George the Conqueror" .999 fine coins. The supply/demand curve for gold is moving outward. New highs for the price of gold have been made recently in all major currencies.

The interest on debt and the debt itself, without raising taxes is unsustainable. This “new normal” will wreck the US economy and the government’s questionable AAA credit rating.

Not China, not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, not terrorists...According to Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the "single biggest threat" to American national security is the US national debt, which is either $8.85 trillion (public debt), $13.4 trillion (total national debt), $20 trillion (total debt including GSE debt), or $124 trillion (total debt including unfunded obligations), depending on one's definition of the word "debt."
Washington Post: August 27

The amount of debt that the US has outstanding is troubling but our debt structure is even worse. In FY 2010, the US Treasury issued $2 trillion in treasury obligations. One and one-half trillion dollars was in rollover debt and $500 billion in fresh issuance. These numbers can only rise in the short term. We are a hopelessly credit driven, not cash oriented, transactional society.

Our credit structured economy, of which, 70% of GDP, is consumer driven. Income utilization for the bottom 95% is primary for debt servicing. Government policies favors continuously buying goods and services by consumers while optimistically believing such activity occurring increases wealth and while reduce debt.

This spiraling upward is the conveyor bell for individual upward mobility. Absent GDP growth, expansion quickly turns to contraction, then, disinflation, and deflation. Except for a few speculators, ultimately, a loss in personal net worth ensues.

Likewise, when the amount of debt becomes too great to service from current cash flows, the economy and asset prices will collapse to sustainable levels. That process can take years. Meanwhile, except for a few speculators, ultimately, a loss in personal net worth ensues. Rising interest rates someday will destroy this current economic model.

The critical mistake made in measuring the totality of legitimate outstanding debt leading up to the 2008 meltdown was underestimating the degree of dishonesty employed by accounting gimmicks, reckless amounts of leverage, lax regulatory supervision, and offshore transactions to hide levels of risk.

Another mistake make in addressing the problem, once uncovered, was paying off legally dubious derivative claims with the moral and ethical weight of Las Vegas betting slips, suspending mark-to-market accounting, or smuggling over two trillion dollars in worthless toxic debt onto the books of the Federal Reserve Board, thus, guaranteeing nasty consequences in the future.

In essence, saving individual companies instead of the financial system itself is delaying final closure to the financial crisis.

The looting of our economy was the gravest of matters and was performed with full knowledge and consent. These mortal sins were the exclamation mark on this recent period of greed and avarice.

A global economy so sophisticated, and so interconnected, and has the wherewithal to produce such wreckage compels us to abandon or greatly curtail our unfettered mercantilism policies. Otherwise, the next seismic event will be greater.

The unintended consequences of callous policies pursued by special business interest and executed by rented elect officials shall radically change who we are as a country over the next decade. We can recover from this tremendous hole we find ourselves in but it requires great leadership and political will. Until then, a greater financial divide will broaden and deepen between the haves and have not’s.

Rationing of goods and services will flourish. Political stability will deteriorate, as unemployment trends higher, tensions will build, and the first 21st century generation will be lost to economic depression cloaked inside an arithmetic mean. That is the price we shall pay.

Baby Boomers’ choices must mirror where we are going, not where we have been. Paper assets in 2000 and real estate in 2006 crossed over from being an ally to an enemy to wealth accumulation for the average investor, and will continue to do so, for years to come.

In anticipation of this global redistribution of wealth, and as global US market share declines to the benefit of emerging markets, the supply/demand curve for precious metals and rare earths will fundamentally raise the floor on the price of gold. The US dollar’s purchasing power will also decline over time.

Baby boomers planning on living for the next 20 years must really consider gold as a core long-term holding in one’s portfolio, and not just a short-term trade or a token position, to maintain your family’s net worth, purchasing power, and liquid asset needs.