10.19.2013

Gold for the long run

In an otherwise sensible post, Graham Summers' Phoenix Capital Research makes this erroneous claim.
By the way, I continue to hear how great the Fed is for stocks. However, since we were taken off the Gold standard Gold has outperformed stocks dramatically. In fact the only period in which stocks outperformed Gold as an asset class was the Tech Bubble.
They are flat wrong. President Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971. Prior to that event, gold averaged $41 in July 1971. Gold closed September 2013 at $1332. That's an 8.6% annualized return.

The S&P 500 returned 10.2% or 10.3% compounded over that time through September 2013, depending what day you mark the beginning, clearly beating gold. What is Graham Summers missing? I'd guess he's looking only at price return, and forgetting dividends. Price returns were about 7% over that period, and dividends made up the difference.

As for the second part about "the only period in which stocks outperformed Gold as an asset class was the Tech Bubble," well, that's just sheer nonsense. Stocks outperformed gold by a large margin in 2012, and are delivering another thumping this year. There were obviously many other periods over the past 42 years when stocks outperformed gold, often substantially.

Still, gold is an essential part of any nutritious portfolio, providing equity-like returns with great diversification because it is generally uncorrelated with stocks and bonds. Get thee to your dealer.

1 comment:

Doo Doo Econ said...

You've now been told about gold.

QE has permanently ruined bonds for investors

You used to earn an interest rate roughly inline with nominal GDP growth, even slightly better. Since the Fed started manipulating interest...