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[This blog post is an excerpt from a recent TSI commentary]

Last week, a highly paid (we assume) JP Morgan analyst opined:

“When it comes to market developments, we believe that the Fed’s action last Thursday represents a pivotal moment in this crisis. Powell’s statement included that “we will continue to use these powers forcefully, proactively, and aggressively until we are confident that we are solidly on the road to recovery” and probably the most important, historic statement, “We should make them whole. They did not cause this.” This crisis is different from any other in recent history in that it was not caused in any way by businesses or investors. Unhindered by moral hazard, the response of fiscal and monetary authorities is and will continue to be unprecedented, with the goal of essentially making everyone ‘whole.’ We believe the significance of this development is underestimated by markets, and this reinforces our view of a full asset price recovery, and equity markets reaching all-time highs next year, likely by H1. Investors with focus on negative upcoming earnings and economic developments are effectively ‘fighting the Fed,’ which was historically a losing proposition.”

Well, if moral hazard was the only thing that prevented the Fed from acting in the past to eliminate everyone’s losses, then why has the Fed never bothered to eliminate poverty? After all, not every poor person is in that situation due to having done something wrong. In particular, none of the children living in poverty are to blame for their predicament.

Taking a broader view, if it is possible for the central bank to make everyone “whole”, then why are some countries poor? These countries have central banks that are capable of doing what the Fed is now promising to do.

The problem, of course, is that the central bank cannot add real wealth to the economy. It cannot produce anything of real value. All it can do is conjure money and credit out of nothing, thus setting in motion countless exchanges of nothing for something and distorting the price signals upon which markets rely. This is a recipe for more poverty and generally lower living standards in the long term.

At some point during the second half of this year, the release of pent-up demand as restrictions are removed and people go back to work, combined with the flood of new money generated by the Fed, could make it seem as if there has been a ‘V’ bottom in the economy and that the entire recession lasted only about four months. This could enable the SPX to return to within 10% of its February-2020 all-time high before year-end. However, the price distortions that have been and will be caused by the effort to make everyone “whole” will prevent a sustainable recovery.

The deluge of new money will boost asset prices and the prices of life’s necessities, but many businesses that closed their doors during March of 2020 will never re-open and many people who lost their jobs will remain unemployed (and thus dependent upon government handouts). Also, many of the people who do end up with jobs will find that their real incomes have fallen, because there will be an excess supply of labour and the currency’s loss of purchasing power will be reflected to the greatest extent in the prices of things that are in relatively short supply. For the majority of people, therefore, the post-shutdown economy will never be as good as the pre-shutdown economy, not despite the Fed’s efforts but largely because of them.

In a blog post three weeks ago, I mentioned that in TSI commentaries over the past year I had been tracking the current performance of the gold mining sector (as represented by the HUI) with its performance during the mid-1980s (as represented by the Barrons Gold Mining Index – BGMI). The 1980s comparison predicted the big moves that have occurred since May of last year, including the Q1-2020 crash. I concluded the earlier post with the comment: “History informs us that after a crash comes a rebound and after a rebound there is usually a test of the crash low.”

Here is an update of the weekly chart that I have been showing at TSI for almost a year. The latest price shown for the HUI is last week’s close. The chart suggests that the obligatory post-crash rebound is almost complete and that the next move of consequence will be a decline to test the March low.

If a test of the March low occurs, it should be successful (it’s highly probable that the gold mining indices and ETFs made their bottoms for the year last month). However, with regard to future outcomes there is always more than one realistic possibility. For example, although the historical record suggests that a test of the March low will happen within the next two months, a more bullish short-term outcome is possible.

Parameters that could be used to indicate that a different short-term scenario was playing out have been mentioned at TSI, but at this stage I think the odds favour a test of the crash low for pretty much everything that has crashed, including the gold sector. Looking beyond the short-term, I expect that the major fundamental differences between the late-1980s and the present will assert themselves during the second half of this year and cause the current market for gold mining stocks to diverge (in a bullish way) from the 1980s path.

[This blog post is an excerpt from a recent commentary published at TSI]

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which isn’t modern and isn’t a theory (in the true meaning of the word), is now being put into practice in many countries, including the US. What’s happening isn’t being called MMT, but that’s what it is.

Under cover of the “coronacrisis”, we are now witnessing the introduction of MMT. Specifically, in an effort to alleviate the short-term pain associated with the economy-wide shut-downs that they are enforcing as part of history’s biggest ever over-reaction, governments are now promising to spend money as if they had access to an unlimited supply of the stuff. They can do this because with the help of the central bank they do have access to an unlimited supply of the stuff.

The US government and the Fed are leading the way and in doing so all lines that are supposed to separate these two organisations are being blurred or eliminated. To put it another way, the pretence that the Fed is independent of the government has been dropped.

First, there’s the $2 trillion “stimulus” package that was just signed into effect by President Trump. How could a government that supposedly had to limit the pace of its deficit spending suddenly decide to instantly triple its deficit? Where is the money coming from to do this? After all, nobody is talking about increasing taxes. On the contrary, there is talk of delaying and reducing taxes. Clearly, the plan is for the money to be created out of nothing by the Fed.

Even more tellingly, there are the programs introduced by the Fed over the past two weeks. These are:

a) The Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), via which the Fed will buy commercial paper from issuers.

b) The Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF), via which the Fed will lend to financial institutions secured by assets purchased by the financial institution from money market mutual funds.

c) The Main Street Business Lending Program (MSBLP), via which the Fed will lend directly to small and medium-size businesses.

d) The Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility (PMCCF), via which the Fed will buy corporate bonds from issuers.

e) The Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF), via which the Fed will buy corporate bonds and bond ETFs in the secondary market.

f) The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), via which the Fed will support the issuance of asset-backed securities.

Now, the Fed isn’t supposed to do any of the above, but it is getting around the existing regulations by creating Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) that will do the actual buying and lending. The US government will fund these SPVs with initial capital that the Fed will leverage 10:1. That is, for every dollar injected by the government into one of these SPVs, the Fed will create 10 new dollars via the traditional methods of fractional reserve banking.

The truly crazy thing is that the dollars that the government will inject into the Fed’s SPVs were previously created out of nothing when the Fed monetised Treasury securities. So, the Fed creates money out of nothing. This money then goes to the government. The government then deposits some of this money into the Fed’s new SPVs, and based on this injection of ‘capital’ the Fed creates a lot more money out of nothing.

The indirect costs, in terms of reduced productivity, higher unemployment and reduced living standards, of this money creation will be huge and long-lasting, but we’ll leave the discussion of these longer-term issues until after the immediate crisis has abated.

Our main point today is that the method of government funding appears to have changed in a permanent way. No longer will governments feel constrained by their abilities to tax the population and borrow from bond investors. From now on they will act like they have unrestricted access to a bottomless pool of money.

Inflation expectations have crashed along with the stock market and the oil price. This is evidenced by the following chart of the 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate, which indicates the average CPI that the market expects the government to report over the years ahead. Since the advent of the TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) market in 2003, the Expected CPI was only below last Friday’s level of 0.50% during November-December of 2008 and January of 2009, that is, during the concluding months of the Global Financial Crisis.

The collapse in inflation expectations over the past several weeks does not indicate that “inflation” will be much lower in the future. On the contrary, beyond the short-term it greatly increases the risk of higher “inflation”.

Over the next few months the CPI will be lower than would have been the case in the absence of the coronavirus-related restrictions to economic activity and the plunge in the oil price, but by this time next year the CPI probably will be much higher due to the following:

1) Aggressive central bank reactions to the economic slowdown and the stock market plunge. These reactions will distort prices and hamper the economy, but to a man with nothing except a hammer every problem looks like a nail. To a central banker, every economic problem other than obvious “price inflation” looks like a reason to create more money and credit out of nothing. Also, to the central bankers of the world the recent rapid decline in inflation expectations is like a giant cattle prod pushing them in the direction of pro-inflation monetary policy.

2) In addition to aggressive monetary stimulus there will be aggressive fiscal stimulus. This would be the case anyway under such circumstances, but in the US the short-term stimulus from increased government spending will be more aggressive than usual due to this being an election year.

3) Once the coronavirus threat dissipates, there will be the natural release of pent-up demand.

4) The widespread shutting down of mines, production facilities and trade-related transportation will damage supply chains, in some cases permanently due to parts of ‘chain’ going bust, and ensure that it will take more time than usual for producers to respond to increased demand and rising prices.

Adding the natural force of pent-up demand release to the unnatural forces of monetary/fiscal stimulus and supply disruptions resulting from forced shut-downs should mean that “inflation” will be materially higher a year from now than would have been the case in the absence of the Q1-2020 calamity. My prediction: During the first half of 2021 the official US CPI, which routinely understates the increase in the cost of living, will print above 4%.

In TSI commentaries since May-June last year I have been tracking the current performance of the gold mining sector with its performance during the mid-1980s. More specifically, I have been comparing the current HUI with the mid-1980s Barrons Gold Mining Index (BGMI). The chart that illustrates this model is displayed below.

The model predicted the rapid rise in the HUI during June-August of last year, the steep correction from a peak by early-September to an October-November low, the rise to a new multi-year high by January-2020 and the crash to a low in March-2020. The big predictions associated with this model are now in the past, which is why I can take the liberty of including it in a free blog post.

The main point I want to make with this post is that even though the present often looks very different from any previous time, the bulk of what happens in the financial markets has happened before. It’s often just a matter of finding the right historical comparison, which is always easier said than done. Also, valid comparisons with previous times always have limited lifespans. It’s possible, for example, that my comparison with the mid-1980s has almost reached the end of its useful life.

Knowledge of how markets have performed in the past, including the distant past (not just the preceding 10-20 years), is useful even if it doesn’t lead to a specific history-based model. For example, anyone with knowledge of market history knows that when the gold mining sector is stretched to the upside near the start of a general stock market crash, it always crashes with the broad market. As far as I know, there have been no exceptions.

History informs us that after a crash comes a rebound and after a rebound there is usually a test of the crash low.

[This blog post is a modified excerpt (with an updated chart) from a TSI commentary published one month ago]

Last July the gold/silver ratio came within 10% of its 50-year high, which was reached in 1991, and within 15% of its multi-century high, which was reached in the early 1940s. The following monthly chart from goldchartsrus.com shows that on a monthly closing basis the ratio has just made a new multi-decade high and is now within 10% of a 300-year high, meaning that silver has almost never been cheaper relative to gold than it is today.

One way to interpret the gold/silver ratio chart is that silver has huge upside potential relative to gold. I think this interpretation is correct, but there is a realistic chance that the ratio will make a new multi-century high (in effect, a new all-time high) before silver embarks on a major upward trend relative to gold.

This is not my preferred scenario, but a new all-time high in the gold/silver ratio could occur within the next 12 months due to a major deflation scare.

My current expectation is that over the bulk of this year there will be US dollar weakness and signs of increasing “inflation”, which is a financial/economic landscape that would favour silver over gold and pave the way for some mean reversion in the gold/silver ratio. However, if the stock market bubble were to burst, economic confidence probably would tank and there would be a panic towards ‘liquidity’. For the general public that would involve building-up cash, but for many large investors it would involve buying Treasury bonds and gold. Silver eventually would benefit from the strength in the gold market, but the silver market is not big enough and liquid enough to accommodate investors who are in a hurry to find a safe home for billions of dollars of wealth. Initially, therefore, the gold/silver ratio could rise sharply under such a scenario.

The scenario described above would lead to panic at the Fed, eventually resulting in the introduction of the most aggressive asset monetisation scheme to date. That’s the point when silver probably would commence a major catch-up move.

A 23rd February blog post by Sven Henrich hits a couple of nails on the head. Here’s an excerpt:

“…the virus…clearly has a short term effect, but rather the broader risk is the excess created by ultra-loose monetary policies that has pushed investors recklessly into asset prices at high valuations while leaving central bankers short of ammunition to deal with a real crisis. There was no real crisis last year, a slowdown yes, but central bankers weren’t even willing to risk that, instead they went all in on the slowdown. It is this lack of backbone and co-dependency on markets that has left the world with less stimulus options for when they may be really needed. Reckless.”

Yes, central banks present a vastly greater threat to the economy than the coronavirus. Unfortunately, however, there never will be a vaccine that could immunise the economy from the effects of interest rate manipulation. Also, Sven is wrong when he writes that central bankers are short of ammunition and when he implies that stimulus options of the central planning kind will be needed at some point in the future. These options are always counter-productive and therefore never needed.

Central banks are a long way from being short of ammunition, because there effectively is no limit to the amount of money they can create. They can monetise (purchase with money created out of nothing) pretty much anything. At the moment they generally have restricted themselves to the monetisation of their own government’s debt, but they could expand their bond-buying to encompass investment-grade corporate debt and, if that wasn’t deemed sufficient, high-yield (junk) debt. They also could monetise equities, perhaps beginning with ETFs and working their way down to individual stocks. If they wanted, with a change of some arbitrary rules they could even monetise commercial and residential real estate.

It could be argued that “inflation” (in the popular sense the word: an increase in the so-called general price level) limits the amount of new money that central banks can create, in that after “inflation” starts being perceived as a major threat the central bank will come under irresistible political pressure to tighten the monetary reins. This is one of the tenets of the idiocy known as Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT for short. According to MMT, the government should be able to create out of thin air whatever money it needs, with the “inflation” rate being the only limitation. However, in some developed countries, including the US, many people already are having trouble making ends meet due to the rising cost of living, and yet the central bank claims that the “inflation” rate is too low and senior politicians agree.

As well as distorting price signals and thus getting in the way of economic progress, when the central bank makes long-term additions to its balance sheet it is, in effect, surreptitiously nationalising part of the economy. For example, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) already has nationalised Japan’s government bond market and is well on its way towards nationalising the market for ETFs (the BOJ owns about 80% of all ETF shares listed in Japan).

The creeping nationalisation of markets is something that is rarely, if ever, mentioned during discussions of current and potential monetary stimulus, but it’s a big problem that looks set to get even bigger.

[This blog post is a modified excerpt from a recent TSI commentary]

The main purpose of the GDP growth numbers and most other economic statistics reported by China’s government is to tell the story that the central committee of the Communist Party wants to tell. In other words, the economic numbers form part of the State’s propaganda.

For example, during the first decade of this century the Party’s objective was to show that the economy was performing in spectacular fashion, so the reported GDP growth numbers were almost never below 8% and regularly above 10%. In more recent years the overriding concern has been to paint a picture of stability and sustainable progress, which has involved reporting consistent GDP growth in the 6%-7% range. Refer to the following chart for more detail. Amazingly, most Western analysts accept these figures as if they were accurate reflections of reality, partly, we suspect, because there is no way to prove that what’s being reported is bogus.

Once in a while, however, something happens that shines a light on the meaninglessness of the official numbers. An example was the claim by China’s government that its economy was still growing at an annualised pace of more than 6% during the worst point of the 2007-2009 global recession. Another example very likely will be the quarterly GDP growth that China’s government reports for the first quarter of this year.

The consensus view in the financial news media appears to be that due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, China’s GDP growth rate in Q1-2020 will slide from 6%+ to ‘only’ 4%-5%. The reality, however, is that China’s economy could not be growing at the moment. Large sections of the country have been essentially put in lock-down mode, and many factories, restaurants, shops and other businesses have been temporarily closed. Tourism has ground to a halt, home sales have collapsed by 90% and vehicle sales are expected to fall by 50%-80% from the same period last year. In some large Chinese cities, including Shanghai, the government has directed state property owners not to collect rent from small- and medium-sized businesses during February and March.

Other examples of the virus’s dampening effect on economic activity are included in articles published on 13th February at the South China Morning (SCMP) and Caixin. According to the SCMP article:

“Recruitment site Zhaopin said this week that around 10 per cent of firms they surveyed were “on the verge of death”, with around 30 per cent planning job cuts and another 30 per cent saying they could not pay their employees on time.”

Along similar lines, the Caixin article notes:

“Even before the outbreak, many small businesses were already grappling with shrinking sales as China’s economy logged some of its slowest growth in decades. With business now at a standstill during the outbreak, many are facing existential liquidity crises. Large numbers say they are having difficulties just paying salaries, adding they can only survive for a matter of months using their current resources, even if Beijing provides support.”

It should be obvious to anyone with at least rudimentary knowledge of the world that China’s economy is contracting right now. Therefore, if the government reports GDP growth of 4%+ for the first quarter of this year it will be a tacit admission that the official numbers are totally fictitious. By the same token, to retain any semblance of credibility China’s government will have to admit that its economy shrank during the first quarter of this year.

That’s why China’s next quarterly GDP number will be a test.

In a TSI commentary last November I wrote about adjustments I was making to my stock selection process. These adjustments weren’t due to issues with any individual stock(s) or the performance of any individual stock-market sector. In particular, the poor performance of the average junior gold-mining stock during 2019′s gold rally wasn’t the primary driver of my decision to make some changes, although it was the proverbial “last straw”. The primary basis for my adjustment was evidence that the investing landscape had changed in a permanent, or at least a semi-permanent, way.

Long-term changes in the investing landscape happen from time to time, that is, the future is not always a simple extrapolation of the past. This occurs not because of a change in human nature (human nature never changes), but because of a change in the monetary system. For example, the investment strategy that involved shifting from equities to bonds when the stock market’s average dividend yield dropped below the average yield on investment-grade bonds worked without fail for generations prior to the mid-1950s, but from the mid-1950s onward it didn’t work. The reason this ‘fail safe’ approach to asset allocation stopped working was the increasing propensity/ability of central banks to inflate the money supply.

As part of their attempts to encourage more borrowing and consumption, over the past few years the major central banks manipulated interest rates down to unprecedented levels. Ten years ago very few people thought that negative nominal interest rates were possible, but in 2019 we reached the point where 1) a substantial portion of the developed-world’s government debt was trading with a negative yield to maturity, 2) some corporate bonds had negative yields to maturity, and 3) banks in some European countries were offering mortgages with negative interest rates.

Due to the draconian efforts of central banks to promote more spending and borrowing, it’s possible that the public is now effectively ‘tapped out’. This would explain why the quantity of margin debt collapsed over the past 18 months relative to the size of the US stock market, something that NEVER happened before with the S&P500 in a long-term bullish trend and regularly making new all-time highs. Also, it would explain why the average small-cap stock (as represented by the Russell2000) is trading at a 16-year low relative to the average large-cap stock (as represented by the S&P500).

Linked to the relatively poor performance of the average small-cap stock is the increasing popularity of passive investing via indexes and ETFs. Over the past several years there has been a general decline in the amount of active, value-oriented stock selection and a general rise in the use of ETFs. This has caused the stocks that are significant components of popular ETFs to outperform the stocks that are not subject to meaningful ETF-related demand, regardless of relative value. There is no reason to expect this trend to end anytime soon. On the contrary, the general shift away from individual stock selection and towards the use of ETFs appears to be accelerating.

At this stage I’m not making dramatic changes to my stock selection approach. I will continue to follow speculative small-cap stocks, but my selection process will be more risk averse and I will reduce the potential tracking error during intermediate-term rallies in mining stocks by putting more emphasis on ETFs and mutual funds. Also, when making future speculative mining-stock selections I will pay greater heed to the attractiveness of the assets to large mining companies. The reason is that regardless of the public’s willingness to speculate, large mining companies will always be under pressure to replace their depleted reserves and add new reserves. The easiest way for large companies to do this is to buy small companies that have discovered mineral deposits of sufficient size and quality.

In summary, as a result of unprecedented manipulation of money and interest rates it’s possible that some of the investing/speculating strategies that worked reliably in the past will not work for the foreseeable future. I think it makes sense to adapt accordingly.

[This blog post is an excerpt from a TSI commentary published on 26th January 2020]

Given the extent to which the US stock market is stretched in both momentum and sentiment terms, there doesn’t have to be a news-related catalyst for a significant correction. However, the mainstream financial press tries to link every move in the stock market to the current news. If a correction began last week or gets underway this week it’s likely that many fingers of blame will point to the Wuhan virus.

The situation is ‘fluid’, but at last count 13 Chinese cities had been placed under full or partial lockdown in an effort to prevent the virus from spreading. Furthermore, the number of countries with confirmed cases of the virus is growing.

In terms of global economic impact we think that the Wuhan virus will prove to be a minor issue, but if the number of confirmed cases continues to rise then many market participants could sell first and ask questions later. Based on what happened with similar viruses in the past, the number of confirmed cases might not peak until March.

Blame for a correction also could be directed towards the Fed, largely due to a misunderstanding of the Fed’s “repo market” operations.

The net amount of ‘liquidity’ provided by the Fed to the repo market has declined over the past couple of weeks, but not because the Fed has stopped supporting this market. The money provided to the repo market is a very short-term loan that often matures within one day, so the amount of repo money provided by the Fed will reduce over time unless the Fed adds new money (makes new loans) at a rapid pace. For example, the Fed ‘pumped’ (loaned) $74 billion into the repo market last Thursday, but there was a net decline of $10 billion on the day due to the expiration of $84 billion of previous loans.

Also worth mentioning is that the amount of money provided by the Fed to the repo market cannot exceed the demand for short-term loans in this market.

We assume that the Fed intends to withdraw from the repo market over the coming months, with the very short-term money it provides via this market steadily being replaced by the semi-permanent money it adds via the asset monetisation program — the program that we aren’t supposed to call QE, even though it is mechanically identical to QE — introduced last October. If this happens it will result in a large decline in the “Repurchase Agreements” line on the Fed’s balance sheet and could result in a small decline in the total size of the Fed’s balance sheet, but it won’t be a sign that the Fed is tightening or even becoming less easy.

To further explain, note that even though many commentators lump the Fed’s repo market support program together with the Fed’s asset monetisation program to arrive at a total amount of new Fed-generated monetary inflation, the two programs are very different and should not be combined. The reason is that despite “repo” being short for repurchase, repo operations do not involve asset purchases per se. When the Fed does a “repo” it lends money (that it creates out of nothing) to a borrower and receives collateral, usually in the form of a Treasury security or a Mortgage-Backed Security (MBS), to secure the loan. When the loan is repaid, which happens one or fourteen days later depending on whether it’s an overnight loan or a term loan, the money is returned to the Fed (and is immediately extinguished) and the collateral is returned to the borrower.

Any monetary inflation caused by the Fed’s repo operations is therefore self-extinguishing within a very short time (1-14 days). However, monetary inflation caused by the Fed’s asset monetisation program could be permanent. The reason is that although the debt securities (T-Bills) purchased by the Fed with new money will mature within a few months, the Fed has said that it will re-invest (rather than extinguish) the proceeds received when the securities mature.

The upshot is that even if the total size of the Fed’s balance sheet reduces as the repo support program winds down, as long as the Fed is adding ‘permanent’ money via its asset monetisation program it is acting in an inflationary manner. Consequently, it will not be reasonable to blame a near-term stock market downturn on the Fed becoming tighter or less easy.

Just to be clear, the Fed is at least partly responsible for the fact that the stock market rose in a virtual straight line from mid-October through to 23rd January. However, the Fed is not responsible for the market pulling back from an overbought/overbullish extreme.

The crux of the matter is that regardless of the fundamentals, large and liquid markets don’t go up or down in straight lines for long. There are always corrections. Surely we don’t have to rack our brains in an effort to come up with a fundamental reason for a correction when some short-term sentiment and momentum indicators are stretched to historic extremes. It’s more of a challenge to explain why a correction didn’t happen sooner.

Do gold mining stocks, as represented by the Barrons Gold Mining Index (BGMI) or the XAU or the HUI, lead gold bullion at significant turning points? According to many analysts the answer is a resounding “yes”. However, according to the historical record the answer is “sometimes, but not consistently”. I’ll go with the historical record.

There are plenty of examples of gold mining stocks leading the bullion price at a turning point from down to up or up to down, but there are at least as many examples of gold mining stocks lagging the bullion at a turning point. The most blatant example of the latter occurred in 1980. It is well known that gold bullion reached a long-term price top in January-1980, but it is less well known that gold mining stocks, as represented on the following weekly chart by the BGMI, experienced a huge rally after the major high in the gold price and didn’t reach a long-term peak of their own until September-1980.

Another example of gold bullion leading the gold-mining sector at a meaningful turning point occurred during the mid-1980s. First, gold bullion reached a multi-year bottom in February-1985, but it wasn’t until July-1986 that the XAU reached a similar bottom. Second, the XAU commenced an intermediate-term rally in late-July of 1986, but as noted on the following daily chart the associated bottom in the gold price occurred about 6 weeks earlier.

Here are examples of the same lead-lag relationship from the more recent past:

1) Gold bottomed on a long-term basis in early-December of 2015, but the equivalent low for the HUI didn’t occur until mid-January of 2016. Gold then reached an intermediate-term top in July-2016, but the associated top for the HUI wasn’t put in place until about a month later. In other words, the gold-mining sector lagged the bullion market at both the start and the end of the 2016 intermediate-term rally.

2) Gold made an intermediate-term bottom in August-2018, whereas the HUI waited until September-2018 to make an intermediate-term bottom of its own. Then, in May of 2019 the HUI made a sequence of lower correction lows while gold bullion remained above the low it made at the beginning of the month.

In my experience, rather than labour under the unreliable assumption that gold stocks lead the bullion at turning points, any divergence or non-confirmation between gold stocks and gold bullion should be viewed as potentially bullish after prices have become stretched to the downside and potentially bearish after prices have become stretched to the upside. For example, after prices have been trending downward for several months, a new multi-month low in the gold price that isn’t quickly confirmed by the HUI or a new multi-month low in the HUI that isn’t quickly confirmed by the gold price should be viewed as a bullish sign. By the same token, after prices have been trending upward for several months, a new multi-month high in the gold price that isn’t quickly confirmed by the HUI or a new multi-month high in the HUI that isn’t quickly confirmed by the gold price should be viewed as a bearish sign.

To put it more simply, non-confirmations between the gold price and the related mining indices matter, but it doesn’t matter whether the non-confirmations involve relative strength or relative weakness in the mining sector.

[This post is an excerpt from a recent TSI commentary]

Over the past four months the Fed has added about $400B to its balance sheet. To put this into perspective, since early September the Fed has expanded its balance sheet at an annualised rate of around 30%. According to the Fed, the purpose of this dramatic monetary expansion was to address a temporary liquidity issue in the “repo” market. The question is: If the Fed is dealing with only a temporary shortage of liquidity in the market for short-term money, why did it introduce a program in mid-October to supplement the temporary injections of “repo” money with $60B/month of permanent money?

The answer is that the Fed is dealing with something more than a temporary shortage of liquidity in the market for short-term money. The fact that the Fed sees the need to remove $60B/month of Treasury supply from the market in addition to the Treasury supply that is being removed on a temporary basis via “repo” operations implies that the overall demand for Treasury debt is falling short of Treasury supply at the Fed’s targeted interest rates. Looking from a different angle, it is clear that at current interest rates the global financial system wants more dollars and less Treasury debt. The Fed is accommodating this desire by increasing the supply of dollars to the market and reducing the supply of government debt that must be absorbed by the market.

The key phrase in the above paragraph is “at current interest rates”. If the supply of and the demand for money and credit were permitted to balance naturally then interest rates would now be much higher. However, the Fed doesn’t want supply and demand to strike a natural balance; the Fed has decided that it wants the price of credit at a certain level and that it will use its power to create and destroy money to override natural market forces. In this regard the current situation is unusual only in degree, because the Fed has been attempting to override market forces for more than 100 years.

The US Federal government is not about to slow the pace at which it emits new debt. On the contrary, the rate of growth in government debt supply looks set to rise. Therefore, one of two things will have to happen if interest rates are to stay near current low levels: The Fed will have to keep absorbing Treasury supply at a rapid pace or the market’s desire to hold Treasury debt will have to increase substantially. The latter could occur in response to a sizable decline in the US stock market or a crisis outside the US.

Within a week of its mid-October announcement we wrote that the Fed’s promise to inject $60B/month of new ‘permanent’ money was a potential game-changer, in that it could extend the current cycle (prolong the equity bull market) and lead to more “price inflation” than earlier programs. We continue to think that a cycle extension could be on the cards, but if so the recession warnings that were generated by leading indicators during the second half of last year must disappear within the next couple of months.