Short and Sweet
‘Everyone knows they need a safe haven’

“Last March and April (2020),” writes the Systemic Risk Council’s Paul Tucker in a piece published recently at Financial Times, “the fabric of our financial system was stretched almost beyond endurance. Only intervention from the north Atlantic central banks seems to have averted some kind of disaster triggered by markets grasping the pandemic was serious.”

The most important lesson from that brush with disaster is that the financial authorities did not even bother to disclose to the public (and the investment community) just how dangerous the situation had become until months after the fact. It was labeled, you might recall, a “liquidity problem” that the Fed was addressing – no need to worry. Such circumstances argue strongly for having a hedge in place at all times just in case the wheels actually do come off.

MoneyWeek’s Merryn Somerset Webb posted a reminder of gold’s baseline portfolio role during times of market uncertainty in a separate Financial Times’ opinion piece in early January. “Think of the reasons to hold gold,” she wrote. “If inflation is coming (and it probably is) you want to hold a real asset that can hedge against it — one that can’t be inflated away by relentless money creation and currency debasement.…[E]veryone knows they need a safe haven, but everyone also knows the traditional ones (government bonds) no longer offer that safe haven. That turns us to gold, the one asset that has a 3,000-year record of protecting purchasing power. No wonder the gold price is up around 40 percent since 2018. I hold a lot of gold for all these reasons.”

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