Nico Omer

“Right now, every time there is concern about the system investors flee to what they perceive as the safety of key bond markets in the US, Europe and Japan. But there is too much public debt in the US, Japan, and even in Europe as a whole. There is even the potential for a euro zone breakup. Once the authorities run out of room to kick the can down the road, then there will be a big problem. So investors need to understand that the reality is the pure paper money system is slowly unraveling, and the only genuine safe haven for investors is gold, which has been money for thousands of years. The world has gone through cycles many times, and today, as it was back then, gold is the ultimate asset for wealth preservation.”
-Jean-Marie Eveillard, senior investment adviser to First Eagle Funds

Jika Anda ingin tahu apa yang akan terjadi ke depan dan/atau aset-aset mana saja yang sangat bagus saat inflasi demikian tinggi, yang hampir pasti akan kembali menghantui kita jika dan ketika bank-bank sentral memutuskan untuk mencetak uang lagi, maka silahkan baca laporan di bawah ini dengan seksama.

Robert Fitzwilson, founder The Portola Group, secara ekslusif membuat laporan menarik seperti berikut untuk King World News (www.kingworldnews.com), yang diberi judul “How to Survive the Coming Chaotic & Catastrophic Markets” dan tentunya akan membuat sejumlah orang akan mempertimbangkan dengan sangat seksama kepemilikian portofolio mereka saat ini:

“Our last report dealt with the characteristics of a bubble as seen through a technology stock, Cisco, and the sentiment surrounding the choice of that asset.  We thought it would be even more interesting to revisit the issue across a broad array of asset classes during the period from 1978 to 1980.

That period seemed to be the culminating phase for the various factors that shaped the late 1960s through the beginning of the 1980s.  The table below shows the totals returns for these asset classes both before-and-after-inflation.

*After-inflation.

Penting untuk melihat keduanya (before & after inflation) agar memungkinkan bagi kita memperoleh petunjuk tentang bagaimana situasi saat ini dapat teratasi, dan untuk melihat seberapa bagus kondisi portofolio-portofolio yang didiversifikasi secara luas, serta yang paling penting aset-aset mana yang dapat melestarikan kekayaan seperti yang kita semua harapkan tercapai di tengah kondisi pasar yang sedang kacau bahkan berpotensi mengundang bencana ….

“It is easy to answer the third question.  Gold was the clear winner both before-and-after-inflation by a staggering margin.  It is particularly impressive as there were strong competitors for that crown.

Unlike today, interest rates were allowed to rise.  If you owned Treasury bills, you had a chance to offset the inflation driving higher rates.  Before taxes, Treasury bills were flat.  Given the 70% marginal Federal income tax bracket that many paid, it was decidedly negative, but that topic is for another day.

If you owned longer-dated fixed income, it was a devastating period.  The data is for 30-year Treasury bonds, but the destruction was spread across all fixed income.  It was the worst performing asset class, a stomach-churning compound annual decline of about 16%.

Equities did fairly well, even after adjusting for inflation.  High growth technology companies and non-U.S. equities showed solid compound returns.  Real estate stocks, as measured by a broad index of real estate trusts also provided wealth-enhancing returns, although not in the same league with the winner, gold.

The second question is how well broad diversification performed going into this period.  The truth is not well.  The equal-weight returns were good, but fell far short of making the correct call, gold.

Consultants have been advocating a “60%/40%” split between equities and fixed income for 30 years.  While it was appropriate in a 30-year, historic decline in interest rates and when asset showed little correlation, it is not advisable when correlations converge as we saw in 2008.

If and when interest rates are allowed to rise again, we will return to that late 1980s period when rising rates devastated the 40% allocation to fixed income. Most forms of equities, other than those related to precious metals, become a drag on overall performance and preservation.

How this plays out in the short-term is a difficult call.  Our global markets are being impacted by a wide array of powerful forces such as central bank interventions on interest rates as well as high-frequency trading.  History strongly suggests that markets will eventually prevail.  Instead of the bond vigilantes of the 1970s, it could be the oil, gold and food vigilantes in this period.

Along the way, there is potential for great volatility.  As investors, we need to work from history and as well as an overall strategy.  We believe that those investors with a heavy allocation to real assets and very short-term fixed income will be best positioned to adapt to what comes next.

Energy, precious metals, high quality precious metals mining companies and food are the areas in which to concentrates one’s focus given what we know today.  Equities in general might also get a significant boost, even from these levels if the major countries do engage in coordinated, massive printing.

If that is the chosen path, however, it will ensure that gold will be once again grabbing the crown as the top performer and the top wealth-preserving asset.”

What Do the Charts Say?

Dalam “Negative Real Interest Rates Argue for New Highs in Gold” Chris Puplava, seorang Portfolio Manager dan Fundamental Analyst dari PFS Group, membahas satu dari pendorong-pendorong utama harga emas dalam beberapa tahun terakhir.  Meksipun artikel tersebut sudah dipublikasi sejak 27 Juli 2012, namun masih sangat relevan:

“At any given point in time there are several variables that affect the price of gold.  There are times when gold’s price is driven by its perceived association with inflation and other times it’s seen as a “safety asset” or even a global currency.  One variable in particular that was a constant driver of gold’s bull market in the 1970s was the presence of negative real interest rates – where inflation rates are higher than nominal interest rates – which means savers who park their cash at the bank are seeing their purchasing power eroded.  The power of negative real interest rates as a major catalyst for gold has also been dominant in gold’s secular bull market this time around and currently argues for new highs.  However, the USD’s strength at present has been keeping gold in check.  That may soon change if the Euro begins to stabilize and money flows back out of the USD.

Gold Variables

As mentioned above, one of the strongest correlations to the price of gold is not the USD but actually real interest rates.  This can been seen below in which the top panel shows the open interest for gold futures contracts, the middle panel shows gold along with real interest rates (inverted in red), and the bottom panel shows the USD Index along with gold (USD Index shown inverted for directional similarity).  Real interest rates in the middle panel have had the most consistent relationship with gold over the years but that changed in the middle of 2011 when the USD Index began to rise (fall in bottom panel below), despite real interest rates falling to new lows which suggested gold should be hitting new highs.

I believe that once we see the USD peak and the EUR stabilize we will see money flow out of the USD and into other currencies which will lead to weakness in the USD and strength in gold.  I think a turning point is at hand as gold is already beginning to rally relative to global currencies as seen in the table below.  Gold over the last month (middle column below) is up against virtually every world currency save but 3, indicating its recent strength is a global development.

We are also entering the seasonal strong period for gold in which it typically bottoms in the middle of August and then rallies into the end of the year due to seasonal gold buying by India for the upcoming wedding season.

Last year the demand from India was particularly weak and part of the reason for this was gold’s more than 37% move between early July and September when priced in Indian Rupee.  Basically India went on a buyer’s strike due to the shock in prices.  However, gold priced in Rupee has essentially gone nowhere and Indians have had time to adjust to higher prices just as the US has adjusted to higher gasoline prices, and so it is not likely that the current level of gold will be as major of a depressant on Indian buying this season as it was last year.  Moreover, the Chinese who have been major buyers of gold have seen it decline roughly 20% from last year to this year’s low and are likely buyers at these levels.”

Saya sendiri setuju dengan sebagian besar analisa tersebut, kecuali satu hal. Saya pribadi memperkirakan dolar AS tidak akan melemah signifikan dalam jangka menengah, seiring dengan pergerakannya yang mendekati support zone-nya antara 81.00 dan 81.50.

Berlawanan dengan analisa tersebut, saya melihat dolar AS akan menguat kembali dalam jangka pendek, terutama terhadap mata uang euro dan pound sterling, dan terus berlanjut menguat terhadap dolar Australia.  Dan koreksi emas dalam jangka pendek potensial akan terjadi setelah terlihat pola bearish divergence pada indikator Relative Strength Index pada grafik hariannya berikut:

Dan agar kita tetap melihat prospek yang seimbang di pasar emas, berikut adalah laporan terbaru dari Elliot Wave International (EWI)’s Global Market Perspective.. Seperti biasa, EWI masih (sangat) bearish terhadap emas dan mengatakan bahwa “gold and silver are nearing the end of countertrend rallies, which, when complete, will lead to a resumption of their larger declines”:

“Gold bounced from its support shelf at $1527, carrying to a 38.2% retracement of the decline from the September 6, 2011 peak at $1921.50.  The rally from May 16 may be labeled (a)-(b)-(c), a countertrend push, with the (b) wave taking the form of a triangle.  The near-term jump was enough to light another fire under the gold bugs, who quickly proclaimed that the rally would carry to $2000, a new all-time high.  The usual reasons are cited: more quantitative easing and demand from India and China.  “Additional stimulus is inevitable,” a global asset fund manager told Bloomberg.  “There’s no doubt about it, this is gold’s moment.  All the long-term trend signals suggest that gold is in a very strong bull market.”  Gold was in a strong bull market, but it ended a year ago when prices burst above a long-term channel line in a throw-over, signaling the termination of the wave pattern (see chart).  Since the initial decline, gold has moved net sideways, but the larger wave structure and intensifying deflationary forces favor a resumption of the decline from September 2011.  The bottom graph on the chart shows a surge in gold bulls versus bears, according to a weekly Bloomberg poll of metals traders.  At 74.7%, the bull-bear spread jumped to its highest level since November 11, 2011 (90.9%), the week that gold made a countertrend rally high at $1803.29 and declined 16% through December 29.  A break of the shelf at $1527 would confirm the major top.”

Terakhir yang tak kalah penting, menjelang pertemuan ECB, bagaimana seharusnya kita memanggil presiden ECB saat ini, Super Mario atau … Hyper Mario?

Dibuat Tanggal 05 September 2012