Goldman Sachs has turned positive on gold for the first time in five years. Â “Our commodities team believes that the dislocation between the gold prices and U.S. rates is here to say,” Goldman Sachs says. Drivers for higher gold prices include signs of an uptick in inflation and increased risk in equity markets.
Goldman also offers an unusual take on rising interest rates. The conventional wisdom says that higher interest rates are a negative for gold, since the yellow metal doesn’t pay any yield and that hurts it with investors when interest rates are high.
But not when rates are going higher. Goldman says that its data show that in four of the last six tightening cycles–when the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates–gold has outperformed. Goldman foresees four interest rate hikes this year. That’s among the more aggressive interest rate forecasts on Wall Street.
Gold was off slightly today with the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) down 0.62%. That was, of course, a much smaller loss that the 1.43% drop turned in by the Dow Jones Industrial Average the 1.73% loss for the Standard & Poor’s 500. And the 2.93% plunge in the NASDAQ Composite.
On Monday I raised my allocation to the SPDR Gold Shares ETF to 30% in my Perfect 5 Active Passive ETF Portfolio. (You can follow that portfolio on my subscription sites JugglingWithKnives.com and JubakAM.com) I also own SPDR Gold Shares in my Volatility (track it on JubakAM.com) and Jubak Picks portfolios.
