Atahualpa’s downfall is runnin,’ dammit.
That’s a morbid gold rally joke. I’ve used it before. If you don’t get it (the joke I mean), you’ve forgotten the conquistadors chapter from your middle-school social studies text.
That’s just as well I suppose. The GOP would rather Americans not recall the genocidal history of the Western Hemisphere.
Atahualpa was the last Inca emperor. Very long story very short, he was kidnapped and murdered by marauding Spanish adventurers keen to pillage his precious metals. There was considerably more to it than that, but at the end of the day, it was mostly about the gold.
Half a millennium later, “civilized” men are still just as fascinated with sun-colored, shiny objects as Francisco Pizarro and Hernán Cortés, none more so than Donald Trump, savior of the American everyman who, when he’s not busy fighting for blue-collar workers from the White House, spends his days eating the finest Golden Arch fare from golden plates sat upon elaborate banquet tables inside the cavernous, gilded dining halls of his seaside resort fortress.
I don’t so much like editorializing around gold as an asset. It just is what it is: A (hopefully) uncorrelated portfolio hedge and a store of value, not because it has much (value) on the intrinsic merits (it doesn’t), but rather because people think it does. And this particular popular delusion has persisted for pretty much the entirety of human history.
The figure above’s just a simple chart of gold with five-day performance shown. We’re going on a seventh straight weekly gain.
There’s never much use trying to pinpoint a catalyst. That’s an amusing aspect of what passes for gold “analysis”: Virtually anything can be a bull catalyst and now, the only reliable kryptonite for gold (USD real rates) is no longer capable to deterring the metal.
So, what’s behind the inexorable ascent illustrated above? I don’t know. Anything you want to be behind it. Tariff worries, fiscal jitters, geopolitical uncertainty, a slow-burning crisis of fiat regimes, central bank buying, reserve diversification, you name it. I could tell you half a dozen convincing-sounding stories, each built atop and around some kernel of truth.
There’s another chart. It’s from BofA’s Michael Hartnett who annotated what he called “big history.”
That’s ol’ Mike’s story for gold’s near 90-degree rally since the election. “Big history = big gold bulls,” he wrote, noting that Trump 2.0 is “determined to make history.”
What kind of history he didn’t say.
Unfortunately, I sold my dad’s about week 4 into this run.
As for Atahualpa, they don’t teach about him in middle school anymore, because it turns out he not only married his sister, but he also married his cousin. He was married to them at the same time- therefore, he has been cancelled. (I am attempting humor, here.)
I thought it was because he was clearly a DEI emperor?
Chart crime. Would not look nearly so interesting on semi-log graph.
Perhaps some buyers are concerned that Mr Trump may attempt to start selectively defaulting on US treasuries. As hinted at last night aboard Air Force One or in his first term when “the adults in the room” managed to dissuade him from announcing that the US would not honor US debt held by the Chinese. Remember that?
Of course, Scott Bessent will be able to squelch any such notions this time.
Does Trump has his own Micky D’s inside Merde-a-lago? Or does he just order delivery?
Word has it that he has some minions fetch his supply for him from various, differing locations in order to avoid poisoning
GOLD – A topic worthy of a govenment debt analyst. What are the markets with the most assurded liquidity? Short term U.S. government bills is probably near every readers answer. But we have been blinded by yhe competence of our Fed and Treasury since the 1907 JP Morgan bail-out low. Also by the fact that most readers are Americans and have lived in the pax Americana since 1945. ‘E finito’, guys. Trump is not my wote. Gold is becoming the most liquid, fall back asset. Thank you Donald.