Gold pushes higher in cautious trading ahead of Fed speeches
Investor cash holdings near record high; Somerset Webb warns ‘it is only a temporary king’

(USAGOLD – 1/19/2023) – Gold pushed higher in cautious trading ahead of speeches from several Fed officials today, including the St. Louis Fed’s influential James Bullard. It is up $11 at $1917.50. Silver is up 3¢ at $23.57. The dollar hit a seven-month low in overseas trading adding impetus to gold’s upside and leading some to believe that the dominant trend for 2022 might be reversing. CNBC reported yesterday that investors are now holding near-record levels of cash. Merryn Somerset Webb, a senior columnist at Bloomberg Opinion, thinks that might be another dead end for investors. “If you are holding cash,” she says, “it is only a temporary king.” She says that inflation, which erodes the value of cash, will be with us for the long haul and that investors should look to gold, as an alternative.

“As Alex Chartres of Ruffer recently said on my podcast,” she writes in a recent opinion piece, “there aren’t many other things you can turn to as a long-term safe haven in today’s markets. A year ago, some thought Bitcoin might be a rival – a digital gold even. The market has now ‘kneecapped’ that idea. These days, if you want gold, you will need to buy, well, gold. That being the case, the question is not have you too much, but have you enough — the very same question the head of the PBoC is clearly asking himself right now.

Inflation-adjusted price of gold

Chart courtesy of MacroTrends.net