Priced For Collapse [goldseek]
August 3, 2012 Leave a comment
Where is the gold price today? If you’re like many Americans, you have no idea whether it went up, down, or sideways. Fortunately, I know my readers to be more informed – you likely know that after falling from almost $1900, gold has been trapped around $1600 since early May. But you may still be curious why despite continued money-printing and abysmal US economic reports, gold hasn’t been able to hit new highs.
Here’s the truth: gold is currently priced for collapse. Many investors believe the yellow metal has topped out and are selling into every rally.
Nerves of Tin
Being a gold investor is tough business. The last thing any government or corrupt big bank wants is to have a bunch of people putting their savings into hard assets – and gold is one of the hardest of all. So we’re constantly up against tides of propaganda saying that gold has no value or is the refuge of doomsayers.
The effect of this is that even heavy gold investors are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. When house prices were rising, no one was worried that the market had peaked or prices were unsustainable. No one was asking whether all the thin-walled McMansions going up would actually be worth anything in a generation. But for gold, Wall Street has been shorting it all the way up!
Nowhere is this pessimism more evident that in gold mining stocks. Rising inflation has driven production costs higher, but the mistaken belief that inflation is contained and Treasuries are a safer haven is keeping a lid on gold prices. As such, many of the major producers have missed their earnings projections, and their share prices have been punished. This has placed a cloud over the entire sector. In fact, the P/E ratios of major gold miners are near record lows. Stock prices reflect future earning expectations, and judging by the low P/Es, Wall Street expects future earnings to plummet. This likely reflects their bearish outlook for gold, which is generally viewed as a bubble about to pop.
Chronic Memory Loss
Unfortunately, there is no public validation for those who have proved the gold doubters wrong. A couple of years ago, I predicted gold would cross $1500 and even my own staff thought the call was too risky, too extreme. But I knew then, as I know now, that at the end of the day the gold price is not a mystery – it’s a proxy for dollar weakness.
Since most investors do not truly understand gold’s economic role, they assume the 10-year bull market must be a mania. But manias show parabolic growth detached from any fundamental driver. The definition of a mania is the bidding up of an asset quickly and beyond all long-term justification.
