Don't ask me about gold, ask about the USD

Mid-week market update: The market gods must be angry. Just as a goldbug predicted the demise of the US Dollar (and therefore the rise of gold) as of September 30, 2016 at 4pm ET, the USD rallied and gold cratered on Tuesday. The technical damage to gold was extensive, as it broke a key support level at 1300, though it did stabilize today.

I have had a number of questions about the outlook for gold in the past. My reply has always been the same. Don`t ask me about gold, ask about the US Dollar. Consider this chart of stated gold reserves. Assuming that the conspiracy theorists are wrong and the United States has all the gold it says it has, the market value of US gold reserves at $1300 per oz comes to roughly $340 billion. That`s not even a single year`s fiscal deficit!

The global holdings of US Treasury paper dwarfs precious metal holdings. From a portfolio viewpoint, gold cannot be anything but a miniscule weight in the aggregate holdings of a global portfolio. As the gold price is inversely correlated to the greenback, it makes sense to analyze the more liquid asset class, namely the USD.

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