GOLD prices

High gold prices will bring on huge new production, which will depress its price.”

This assertion shows a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the gold market. Gold production is now about 90 million ounces per year and is trending down. That’s partly because, at high prices, miners tend to mine lower-grade ore. And partly because the world has been extensively explored, and most large, high-grade, easily exploited resources have already been put into production. And partly because most production is now unprofitable. Miners aren’t putting any new mines into production.

But new production is trivial relative to the 6 billion ounces now above ground, which only increases by about 1.3% annually. Gold isn’t consumed like wheat or even copper; its supply keeps slowly rising, like wealth in general. What really controls gold’s price is the desire of people to hold it, or hold other things - new production is a trivial influence.

That’s not to say things can’t change. The asteroids have lots of heavy metals, including gold; space exploration will make them available. Gigantic amounts of gold are dissolved in seawater and will perhaps someday be economically recoverable with biotech. It’s now possible to transmute metals, fulfilling the alchemists’ dream; perhaps someday this will be economic for gold. And nanotech may soon allow ultralow-grade deposits of gold (and every other element) to be recovered profitably. But these things need not concern us as practical matters for years to come.

“You should have only a small amount of gold, for insurance.”

This argument is made by those who think gold is only going to be useful if civilization breaks down, when it could be an asset of last resort. In the meantime, they say, do something productive with your money…

This is poor speculative theory. The intelligent investor allocates his funds where it’s likely they’ll provide the best return, consistent with the risk, liquidity, and volatility profile he wants to maintain. There are times when you should be greatly overweight in a single asset class - sometimes stocks, sometimes bonds, sometimes real estate, sometimes what-have-you. From 1971 to 1980 and 2001 to 2011, it was wise to be hugely overweight gold. From 1981 to 2000 and 2011 to the present, it was wise to only keep an insurance position. Right now, you again want an overweight position. The idea of keeping a constant, but insignificant, percentage in gold impresses me as poorly thought out.

“Interest rates are near zero; gold will fall as they rise.”

In principle, as interest rates rise, people tend to prefer holding currency deposits. So they tend to sell other assets, including gold, to own interest-earning cash. But there are other factors at work. What if the nominal interest rate is 20%, but the rate of currency depreciation is 40%? Then the real interest rate is minus 20%. This is more or less what happened in the late ’70s, when both nominal rates and gold went up together. Right now governments all over the world are suppressing rates even while they’re greatly increasing the amount of money outstanding; this will eventually (read: soon) result in both much higher rates and a much higher general price level. At some point, high real rates will be a factor in ending the gold bull market, but that time is many months or years in the future.

“Gold sentiment is dead.”

That’s quite true. Gold sentiment is not just quite subdued among the public; most of them barely know the metal even exists.

You’ll know sentiment is at a high when major brokerage firms are hyping newly minted gold products, and Slime Magazine (if it still exists) has a cover showing a golden bull tearing apart the New York Stock Exchange. We’re a long way from that point. When it arrives, I hope to sell my gold and buy the NYSE.

“Mining stocks are risky.”

This is absolutely true. In general, mining is a horrible business. It requires gigantic fixed capital expense to build a mine, but only after numerous, expensive, and unpredictable permitting issues are handled. Then, the operation is immovable and subject to every political risk imaginable, not infrequently including nationalization. Add in continual and formidable technical issues of every description, compounded by unpredictable fluctuations in the price of the end product. Mining is a horrible business, and you’ll never find Graham-Dodd investors buying mining stocks.

All these problems (and many more that aren’t germane to this brief article), however, make mining stocks excellent speculative vehicles from time to time. Like right now.

“Mineral exploration stocks are very, very risky.”

This is very, very true. There are thousands of little public companies, and some are just a couple steps up from a prospector wandering around with a mule. Others are fairly sophisticated, hi-tech operations. Exploration companies are often classed with mining companies, but they are actually very different animals. They aren’t so much running a business as engaging in a very expensive and long-odds treasure hunt.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that they are not only risky but extraordinarily volatile. The most you can lose is 100%, but the market cyclically goes up 10 to 1, with some stocks moving 1,000 to 1. That kind of volatility can be your best friend. Speculating in these issues, however, requires both expertise and a good sense of market timing. But they’re likely to be at the epicenter of the gold bubble when it arrives - even though few actually have any gold, except in their names.

“Warren Buffett is a huge gold bear.”

This is true, but irrelevant - entirely apart from suffering from the logical fallacy called “argument from authority.” Nonetheless, when the world’s most successful investor speaks, it’s worth listening. Here’s what Buffett said about gold in an interview with Ben Stein, another goldphobe:

"You could take all the gold that’s ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what that’s worth at current gold prices, you could buy all - not some, all - of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 ExxonMobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?"

I’ve long considered Buffett an idiot savant - a genius at buying stocks but at nothing else. His statement is accurate, but completely meaningless. The same could be said of the U.S. dollar money supply - or even of the world inventory of steel and copper. These things represent potential, but are not businesses or productive assets in themselves. Buffett is certainly not stupid, but he’s a shameless and intellectually dishonest sophist, despite his disarming and avuncular demeanor. And although a great investor, he’s neither an economist nor someone who believes in free markets.

So, these are some of the more egregious arguments against gold that are being brought forward today. Most of them are propounded by knaves, fools, or the uninformed.

Historically - actually just up until the decades after World War I, when world governments started issuing paper currency with no relation to gold - the metal was cash, and it was used as money everywhere, on a daily basis. It is possible, perhaps likely, that will again be the case in the fairly near future.

The question is: At what price will that occur, relative to other things? It’s not just a question of picking a dollar price, because the relative value of many things - houses, food, commodities, labor - has been distorted by a very long period of currency inflation, increased taxation, and very burdensome regulation that started at the beginning of the last depression. Especially with the fantastic leaps in technology now being made and breathtaking advances that will soon occur, it’s hard to be sure exactly how values will realign after the Greater Depression ends. And we can’t know the exact manner in which it will end. Especially when you factor in the rise of China and India.

A guess? The equivalent of about $5,000 an ounce of today’s dollars. And that number is very possible considering how shaky the world financial situation is, and that we are - I believe - about to enter another gold bull market.

Classic bull markets have three stages. We’re still in the “Stealth” stage - when few people even remember gold exists, and those who do mock the idea of owning it. Next, we’ll enter the “Wall of Worry” stage, when people notice it and the bulls and bears battle back and forth. At some point, we’ll enter the “Mania” stage - when everybody, including governments, is buying gold, out of greed and fear. But also out of prudence.

The policies of Bernanke, Yellen, and Obama - and also of almost every other central bank and government in the world - are not just wrong. These people are, perversely, doing just the opposite of what should be done to cure the problems that have built up over decades. One consequence of their actions will be to ignite numerous other bubbles in various markets and countries. One of the biggest bubbles will be in gold, and the wildest one in mining and exploration stocks.

It's very hard to pick either the top or the bottom of a market. However, there’s a good chance the top of the gold market will coincide to some degree with a real bottom in conventional stocks. For the DJIA, that could be when its average dividend yield is in the 6% to 8% area.

The bottom line is that gold and its friends are again cheap, and they have a long way - in both time and price - to run.