Blog 2 Columns

[This blog post is an excerpt from a recent commentary published at www.speculative-investor.com]

The phrase “Drill baby drill” has been around for a long time, but Trump embraced it during his recent campaign to describe the approach to drilling for oil that would be taken by his administration. What will be the likely effect on the oil price of this approach to oil industry regulation? The short answer is: The effect probably will be minor. For a longer answer, read on.

One reason that the effect of this new approach won’t be substantial is that for all its words to the contrary, the Biden Administration did very little to hinder oil drilling. Therefore, the Trump Administration’s “Drill baby drill” approach will not constitute a major change.

The second and most important reason is that in the absence of regulatory roadblocks the actions of the oil industry will be determined mainly be the oil price. It’s reasonable to expect that drilling activity would ramp up if the oil price were to make a sustained move above $90/barrel, but it’s also reasonable to expect that drilling activity would be slowed if the oil price were to make a sustained move below $60/barrel. Therefore, Trump’s opinion that in the absence of regulatory obstacles the oil industry will drive the price down to very low levels is not plausible.

The reality is that although the oil industry is notoriously undisciplined, due to what transpired over the past ten years the one thing that will instil discipline in the future is a low oil price. In the future, an oil company CEO who continues to expand, or more likely fails to cut, production in response to sustained weakness in the oil price probably won’t keep his/her job.

It’s therefore likely that the future response of US-based oil producers will act to keep the oil price in a wide range. That is, it’s likely that in the absence of other influences the future supply response of the US oil industry will create both a ceiling and a floor for the oil price.

Of course, there will be other influences, one of the most important of which will be the actions taken by OPEC+. OPEC+ has about 5 million barrels/day of spare capacity that could be brought on line relatively quickly and cheaply. This represents a bigger threat to the oil price than the “drill baby drill” policy in the US.

In all likelihood, OPEC+ will act similarly to the US oil industry and only increase its production in response to a sustained rise in the oil price to a much higher level. However, there are plausible scenarios under which OPEC could ramp-up its production despite weakness in the oil price. It has done so in the past with the aim of creating financial problems for its competitors in the West and forcing these competitors to reduce production. It could do so again for this reason or because the Saudi leadership does a deal with the Trump Administration that involves guarantees of security/weapons in exchange for a price-suppressing boost to oil production.

Our view at this time is that a much higher oil price is a realistic possibility for 2026-2027, but that the oil price will spend the next 12 months in the $60-$90 range. Furthermore, whereas it probably would take a war-related supply disruption to push the oil price well above the top of the aforementioned range, a move to well below the bottom of the range could result from either OPEC ramping-up production for the reasons mentioned above or a severe recession.

[This blog post is an excerpt from a commentary published last week at www.speculative-investor.com]

Jurisdictional risk materialises with no warning

Jurisdictional risk is any additional risk that arises from doing business in a foreign country. The problem with this type of risk is that when it materialises, it does so without warning.

As exemplified by two recent events, jurisdictional risk for gold mining companies is relatively high among the countries of West Africa (the countries highlighted on the following map). The first of these events was a statement in early-October from the president of Burkina Faso that the government may withdraw existing permits for gold mines. This statement affected a number of Western gold mining companies, including TSI stock selection Fortuna Mining (FSM). FSM currently generates about 25% of its gold production in Burkina Faso.

The aforementioned statement by Burkina Faso’s president caused a 10% single-day plunge in the FSM stock price. The company put out a press release that soothed fears and the stock price quickly recovered, but the risk remains and could move back to centre-stage at any time.

The second of these events occurred early this week when Australia-listed Resolute Mining (RSG.AX), which is not a current TSI stock, advised that its CEO and two other employees had been detained by the government of Mali due to a disagreement over the government’s share of revenue from RSG’s Syama gold mine. In response to this news the RSG stock price immediately dropped by around 30% and, as illustrated by the following daily chart, is down by more than 50% from last month’s high. At the time of writing the employees are still being held hostage by the Mali government, which apparently is demanding a $160M payment.

In response to the RSG news, the stocks of some other gold mining companies with substantial exposure to Mali were hit hard. The hit to the B2Gold (BTG) stock price was relatively mild, however, even though the company’s most important currently-producing mine (Fekola) is located in Mali. We assume that this is because the company negotiated a new agreement with the Mali government only two months ago.

When nothing untoward happens in a country with high jurisdictional risk over a long period, investors tend to forget about the risk and the risk discount factored into the stock prices of companies operating in that country becomes small. As mentioned at the start of this discussion, the problem is that when this type of risk materialises, which it eventually almost always does, there is never any warning and therefore never time to get out prior to the price collapse. This is not a reason to avoid completely the stocks of companies operating in high-risk countries, but it is a reason to only buy such stocks when the risk discount is high and to manage the risk via appropriate position sizing and scaling out into strength.

Balance sheet risk materialises WITH warning

Unlike jurisdictional risk, balance sheet risk doesn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere. The signs of trouble are almost always obvious for a long period before the ‘crunch’. If management doesn’t take decisive action soon enough to recapitalise the company, there will no longer be an opportunity to recapitalise in a way that doesn’t destroy a huge amount of shareholder value. On Wednesday of this week the shareholders of i-80 Gold (IAU.TO) learned this lesson.

The IAU stock price was down 58% to a new all-time low on Wednesday 13th November in reaction to the company reporting its financial situation, operating results and a new development plan. In a nutshell, it was an acknowledgement that the company is under severe financial stress. However, this should not have come as a big surprise given that the company reported a working capital deficit of US$60M more than three months ago and has a loss-making business, meaning that the working capital deficit was bound to increase in the absence of new long-term financing.

A strong balance sheet is especially important for gold mining companies that either are in the mine construction phase or have commenced production but are not cash-flow positive. That’s because such companies need a sizable ‘cash/financing cushion’ to stay in business. For exploration-stage companies, having such a cushion is not as critical because these companies can survive by either temporarily stopping their exploration work or doing the occasional small equity financing.

The crux of the matter is that close attention should be paid to the balance sheet, which forms part of the information that public companies issue on a quarterly basis.

[This blog post is an excerpt from a commentary published at www.speculative-investor.com last week]

This is our annual reminder that gold mining stocks should always be viewed as short-term or intermediate-term trades, never as long-term investments. If you want to make a long-term investment in gold, then buy gold bullion.

The reason is illustrated by the following weekly chart. The chart shows more than 100 years of history of gold mining stocks relative to gold bullion, with gold mining stocks represented by the Barrons Gold Mining Index (BGMI) prior to 1995 and the HUI thereafter. The overarching message here is that gold mining stocks have been trending downward relative to gold bullion since 1968, that is, for 56 years and counting.

We’ve explained in the past that the multi-generational downward trend in the gold mining sector relative to gold is a function of the current monetary system and therefore almost certainly will continue for as long as the current monetary system remains in place. The crux of the matter is that as well as resulting in more mal-investment within the broad economy than the pre-1971 monetary system, the current monetary system results in more mal-investment within the gold mining sector.

The difference between the gold mining sector and most other parts of the economy is that the biggest booms in the gold mining sector (the periods when the bulk of the mal-investment occurs) generally coincide with busts in the broad economy, while the biggest busts in the gold mining sector generally coincide with booms in the broad economy. The developed world, including the US and much of Europe, entered the bust phase of the economic cycle in 2022 and the bust is not close to being over. This means that we are in the midst of a multi-year period when a boom should be underway in the gold mining sector.

To date, the gold sector’s upward trend from its 2022 low hasn’t had boom-like price action. The main reason is that the current economic bust is progressing more slowly than is typical, largely because of the efforts of the US government to boost economic activity via recession-like deficit spending and the parallel efforts of both the Treasury and the Fed to boost financial market liquidity. A related reason is that during the economic bust to date the broad stock market has performed unusually well. This has meant more competition for the attentions of speculators and investors. The gold sector has been generating good operating results and stock market performance, but so have many other sectors.

We expect that over the next 12 months the gold mining sector will continue to demonstrate strong earnings growth while most other sectors see flat or declining earnings as the economy slides into recession. This contrast should lead to boom-like price action in the gold sector. In fact, we think that the HUI could trade north of 600 next year while remaining in its long-term downward trend relative to gold bullion.

[This blog post is an excerpt from a recent commentary at www.speculative-investor.com]

Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are espousing policies that will be bearish for the US$ and bullish for gold. This means that regardless of what it turns out to be, the outcome of the November-2024 Presidential Election will be consistent with our view that the US dollar’s foreign exchange value will continue to trend downward and the US$ gold price will continue to trend upward for at least another 12 months. However, apart from having similar ramifications for the longer-term trends in the currency and gold markets, there are substantial differences between the candidates’ main policies. Let’s delve into some of the details.

Harris has talked about raising the capital gains tax rate and introducing a tax on unrealised capital gains to ensure that very wealthy taxpayers pay a minimum tax rate of 25%. If implemented, these changes would have the effect of reducing investment and therefore economic progress. Also, they would be a boon to the IRS and the private tax planning/reporting industry, because the additional complexity introduced by incorporating calculations of unrealised capital gains into taxable income would require substantial extra resources in both the government and the private sector. These extra resources wouldn’t just be non-productive, they would be counterproductive.

As an aside, when politicians introduce new taxes they usually make the assumption that the world will continue as before except with more money being paid to the government. However, taxes change behaviour, sometimes to the extent that new or increased taxes lead to a reduction in government revenue. This is exemplified by the fact that almost every country that has imposed a wealth tax has ended up scrapping the tax because it led to the exodus of capital, resulting in a weaker economy and lower revenue for the government. The reality is that while a promise to extract more money from the extremely wealthy can sound good to many voters, the wealthier a taxpayer the more mobile their wealth tends to be.

Although she has attempted to soften her stance on energy-related issues (for example, she claims to no longer favour a ban on fracking and she has stopped talking about the “Green New Deal” that she once supported), under a Harris regime it’s likely that, as part of a general increase in the amount of government regulation of business, it would be more difficult to get approvals for oil and gas projects. Also, it’s almost certain that the government would direct a lot more resources towards intermittent energy (sometimes called renewable energy). These actions would drive up the price of energy and increase the risk of energy shortages, with knock-on negative implications for the US economy.

Lastly, a Harris administration probably would prolong the Ukraine-Russia war, with devastating additional consequences for Ukraine — and potentially for all of Europe if the war is allowed to escalate — in terms of lives and infrastructure, as well as negative consequences for the US government’s budget deficit. A Trump administration, on the other hand, would be more likely to negotiate a settlement that ends the senseless destruction.

Trump is advocating lower taxes, which would be a plus if he were also advocating government spending cuts to offset the associated reduction in government revenue. However, it seems that no meaningful spending cuts are being considered. Therefore, the tax cuts would accelerate the rate of increase of the federal government’s debt, leading to higher interest rates and private-sector debt being ‘crowded out’ by government debt.

Trump also is advocating tariffs on all imports, with huge tariffs to be imposed on any imports from China. Furthermore, he has stated that he will use tariffs as a weapon against any country that acts in a way that he deems unacceptable, including against any country that attempts to move away from the US$-based international monetary system.

Tariffs that are imposed on US imports are paid by the US-based importers and would get passed on to US consumers, so an effect of the tariffs would be a sizable increase in the US cost of living. Another effect would involve the start of a process to change supply chains and relocate manufacturing in response to the sudden government-forced changes in costs. This process would be long and expensive.

There is no doubt that the Trump tariffs would lead to retaliation from other governments, with predictable effects being smaller markets and smaller profit margins for US companies exporting from the US or operating outside the US. Also, it’s likely that international trade blocs would form that excluded the US.

Most significantly from a long-term perspective, the tariffs and the threat to use tariffs as a weapon to punish governments deemed by the President to be recalcitrant would reduce the international demand for the US$ and could bring forward the demise of the current global monetary system (the Eurodollar System discussed in the 12th August Weekly Update). This is not primarily because the tariffs would lead to less international US$-denominated trading of goods and services, although they certainly would do that. Instead, it is because the non-US demand to hold US dollars is based on the US having large, liquid, open and secure markets. The US financial markets will remain large and liquid for the foreseeable future, but the international demand for the US$ will decline to the extent that these markets are no longer perceived to be open and secure.

The shift away from the US$ would occur over many years, because currently there is no alternative. However, the introduction of Trump’s tariffs would increase the urgency to establish an alternative and could have noticeable effects on the currency market as soon as next year.

By the way, although it was ineffective the Biden administration’s decision in 2022 to ban Russian banks from using the SWIFT system possibly was viewed as a ‘shot across the bow’ by many foreign governments, corporations and wealthy individuals. If Trump gets elected and does what he has said he will do with tariffs, it would be a ‘shot directly into the bow’.

Summarising the above, a Harris administration would attempt to establish higher tax rates, which would lead to reduced investment and a weaker US economy. Also, the price of energy would be higher, more resources would be directed towards inefficient sources of energy and the Ukraine-Russia war probably would either grind on or escalate. A Trump administration wouldn’t make these mistakes, but via aggressive and far-reaching tariffs it would raise the cost of living and throw the equivalent of a giant spanner into the international trading and investing works. One thing that Harris and Trump have in common is that their planned actions will ensure that the US government’s debt burden continues to increase at a rapid pace.

It’s almost as if both sides of the US political aisle have a weaker dollar and a higher gold price as unofficial goals.

The US yield curve is considered to be a good leading indicator of US recession, with an inversion of the curve invariably occurring prior to the start of a recession. However, the Wolf Street article posted HERE questions the yield curve’s reliability. The article notes that part of the US yield curve recently ‘uninverted’, which is true. What’s not true is the claim in the article that since 1998 the US yield curve failed twice by warning of recessions that didn’t occur.

According to the article, the yield curve’s 2019 inversion was a failure because even though there was a recession in 2020, the recession was the result of a pandemic and not a business cycle downturn. This is strange reasoning, to put it mildly.

The only way that you could argue logically that the yield curve’s 2019 inversion was a failure would be if you could re-run history to show that in the absence of the COVID pandemic there would not have been a recession. Since this is not possible, the 2019 inversion should not be viewed as a failure. Either it was a success or it should not be counted.

Also according to the article, there was a yield curve inversion in 1998 that was not followed by a recession.

The problem here stems from interpreting a multi-day spike into inversion territory as a recession signal. This problem goes away if you base your analysis on monthly closing or monthly average prices, which generally is what should be done with long-term indicators.

Here is a monthly chart showing that since the late-1960s every inversion of the US 10year-3month yield spread was followed by a recession. Consequently, if this cycle’s yield curve inversion does not lead to a recession then it will be the first failure of this type (the first false positive) in more than 50 years. Note, though, that the monthly chart of the 10year-3month yield spread shows that there was no yield curve inversion prior to the 1990 recession, so this could be viewed as a false negative.

Regardless of whether or not this cycle’s yield curve inversion leads to a recession, a yield curve inversion/uninversion clearly isn’t a useful trading signal. The time between the warning signal and the projected outcome is simply too long and too variable.

There are many problems with the calculation methodology of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and with the whole concept of coming up with a single number to represent the purchasing power of money. Interestingly, however, if we calculate the inflation-adjusted (‘real’) gold price by dividing the nominal US$ gold price by the US CPI, which is what we have done on the following monthly chart, we see that the result has peaked at around the same level multiple times over the past 50 years and that the current value is around this level. Does this imply that gold’s upside is capped?

It adds to the reasons that we should be cautious about gold’s short-term prospects. These reasons include the size of the speculator net-long position in gold futures, the August-September cyclical turning-point window for the gold mining sector, the likelihood of a reduced pace of US federal government spending during the months following the November-2024 election, the fact that gold’s true fundamentals are not definitively bullish, the high level of the gold/GNX ratio (gold is expensive relative to commodities in general), the extent to which the financial markets have discounted Fed rate cuts (four 0.25% Fed rate cuts are priced-in for 2024, creating the potential for a negative surprise from the Fed), and the high combined value of gold and the S&P500 Index relative to the US money supply. However, we expect that within the next 12 months the gold/CPI ratio will move well into new high territory, mainly because:

1) The US economy finally will enter the recession that has been anticipated for almost two years and that has been delayed by aggressive government spending, leading to efforts by both the Federal Reserve and the federal government to stimulate economic activity.

2) Despite the rise in government bond yields over the past few years, it is clear that neither of the major US political parties nor their presidential candidates have any concern about the level of federal government indebtedness. Putting it another way, currently there is no political will to reduce government spending. On the contrary, both presidential candidates are going down the well-worn path of trying to buy the votes of influential groups while ‘turning a blind eye’ to the government’s debts and deficits.

3) Using our own method of adjusting for the effects of inflation*, which generally will not be accurate in the short-term but should be approximately correct over periods of several years or more, the current ‘real’ gold price is a long way below its 1980 and 2011 highs (our method indicates inflation-adjusted highs of around US$5000/oz in 1980 and US$3400/oz in 2011). Refer to the following monthly chart for more detail.

So, while the proximity of the gold/CPI ratio to its long-term resistance adds to the short-term risk, this resistance probably won’t act as a ceiling for much longer.

*The theory that we apply can be summarised as follows: The percentage reduction in a currency’s purchasing power should, over the long-term, be roughly equal to the percentage increase in its supply minus the percentage increase in the combination of population and productivity.

By our reckoning, during the first half of 2022 the US economy entered the bust phase of the economic boom-bust cycle caused by monetary inflation (rapid monetary inflation causes a boom that inevitably is followed by a bust as the receding monetary tide exposes the boom-time malinvestments). The bust phase almost always culminates in a recession, although it doesn’t have to.

So far, the performances of commodity prices in both US$ terms and gold terms are consistent with an economy in the bust phase, in that last week the GSCI Spot Commodity Index (GNX) tested its cycle low in US$ terms and made a new 3-year low in gold terms. The following daily chart shows GNX in gold terms, that is, it shows the commodity/gold ratio. Booms and busts are defined by the commodity/gold ratio, with booms being multi-year periods during which the commodity/gold ratio trends upward and busts being multi-year periods during which the commodity/gold ratio trends downward.

Note that it is not unusual for the stock market, as represented by the S&P500 Index (SPX), to trend upward for a considerable time after the start of an economic bust. For example, an economic bust started in October of 2018 but the SPX didn’t peak until February of 2020. Therefore, the fact that the SPX made a new all-time high as recently as last month is not inconsistent with the US being in the bust phase of the economic cycle.

What is inconsistent with the bust phase are credit spreads, which prior to the turmoil of the past 1.5 weeks were at their boom-time lows. However, the relatively low average level of US credit spreads does not mesh with the relatively large number of corporate bankruptcies, so it’s likely that credit spreads are sending a misleading signal.

The misleading signal could be the result of junk-rated corporations delaying their re-financings for as long as possible in the hope that if they wait long enough, they will be able to re-finance at lower interest rates during the next Fed rate-cutting cycle. The problem that many of these companies will encounter is that a Fed rate-cutting cycle probably will begin near the start of a recession and a multi-quarter period during which interest rates fall on high-quality debt while rising rapidly on low-quality debt.

In a blog post earlier this year we wrote that the conflict between the signal from the commodity/gold ratio and the signal from credit spreads would have to be resolved either by credit spreads widening substantially in response to evidence of economic weakness or by the prices of industrial commodities rising substantially in response to evidence that a new boom had been ignited. Our view then and now is that the former is by far the more likely outcome. In fact, there’s a good chance that last week’s rise in the credit-spreads indicator shown on the following daily chart marked an important turning point.

[This blog post is an excerpt from a recent commentary at www.speculative-investor.com]

In a blog post in February-2017, we discussed an age-old relationship between interest rates and prices. The following chart-based comparison of the T-Bond yield and the commodity/gold ratio is a pictorial representation of this relationship. At least, it was until about two years ago when a major divergence began to develop between two quantities that previously had been positively correlated. Does this mean that the age-old relationship no longer applies?

The answer is that the age-old relationship hasn’t changed. It can’t change, because it is firmly rooted in economic reality. What’s changed is that the following chart has stopped being a good way to depict the relationship.

The fundamental basis for the underlying relationship is what Keynesians call “Gibson’s Paradox”. We won’t revisit Gibson’s Paradox in this discussion except to point out that it was the name given to the observation that interest rates during the gold standard were highly correlated to wholesale prices but had little correlation to the rate of “inflation”. For a more thorough explanation, please refer to the above-linked blog post.

This excerpt from our blog post explains how the above chart relates to Gibson’s Paradox:

“The commodity/gold ratio is the price of a broad-based basket of commodities in gold terms. In essence, it is a wholesale price index using gold as the monetary measuring stick. Although gold is no longer money in the true meaning of the term (it is no longer the general medium of exchange), it is still primarily held for what can broadly be called ‘monetary purposes’ and in many respects it trades as if it were still money. According to the age-old relationship discussed above and labeled “Gibson’s Paradox” by a confused JM Keynes, the commodity/gold ratio should generally move in the same direction as risk-free interest rates.

The risk-free US interest rate that is least affected by the direct manipulation of the Fed is the yield on the 30-year T-Bond, so what we should see is a positive correlation between the commodity/gold ratio and the T-Bond yield. Or, looking at it from a different angle, what we should see is a positive correlation between the gold/commodity ratio and the T-Bond price. That’s exactly what we do see.”

Well, that was exactly what we WERE seeing until about two years ago, when the T-Bond yield began to trend upward in parallel with a downward trend in the commodity/gold ratio.

As stated near the start of this discussion, the age-old relationship between interest rates and prices (“Gibson’s Paradox”) hasn’t changed. Furthermore, the nature of gold hasn’t changed over the past two years, so the commodity/gold ratio still should be positively correlated with the risk-free interest rate, which, in turn, is determined by economy-wide time preference. What has changed is that the T-Bond yield has stopped being a good indicator of the risk-free long-term interest rate.

Looking from a different angle, the fact that the commodity/gold ratio has trended downward tells us that societal time preference (the determinant of the risk-free interest rate) has been falling, that is, that people are becoming more inclined to save and less inclined to spend. This is a global phenomenon, not a US phenomenon, but evidence in support of this can be found in the following chart of US retail sales. The chart shows that nominal (that is, not inflation-adjusted) US retail sales were only about 3.5% higher in May-2024 than they were two years’ earlier. Over the same period the US CPI rose by 7.5%, so in real terms the dollar value of US retail sales has fallen over the past two years.

The commodity/gold ratio tells us that the risk-free interest rate has fallen since the second quarter of 2022; however, the T-Bond yield is now much higher. This can’t be explained by rising inflation expectations, because the market prices of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) tell us that inflation expectations have fallen since the second quarter of 2022.

The only way to explain the rise in government bond yields in the face of a falling risk-free interest rate and flat-to-lower inflation expectations is declining confidence in government and/or increasing fear that the rate of growth in the supply of government debt is going to become a major problem in the not-too-distant future. That is, trends in the T-Bond yield no longer reflect trends in the risk-free interest rate due to an expanding risk premium in the T-Bond yield associated with an increasingly profligate government. This, by the way, is one of the reasons why anyone who predicts that Treasury yields are going back to anywhere near their 2020 lows will be wrong.

We now have a market analysis challenge because there is no longer an indicator of the risk-free interest rate that is independent of the gold price. At least, we can’t identify one at the moment. We can use the commodity/gold ratio to provide information regarding the interest rate that underlies all other interest rates, but we don’t have a separate indicator of the risk-free interest rate that can be used to assess whether gold is too expensive or too cheap relative to commodities.