After the Fall: How Far Can Gold and Silver Climb?
By Jeff Clark
09/27/11 Stowe, Vermont – With gold a stone’s throw away from $2,000 and already up 27% on the year, the objective investor might begin wondering how much higher both it and silver can climb. After all, gold is nearing its inflation-adjusted 1980 high — and that peak was a spike that lasted only one day.
So, how much return can we realistically expect in each metal at this point? And is one a better buy than the other? There are dozens of ways to calculate price projections, but I’m going to use data based strictly on past price behavior from the 1970s bull market.
First, let’s measure what today’s inflation-adjusted price would be if each metal matched their respective 1980 highs, along with the return needed to reach those levels:
Based on the CPI-U (the government’s broadest measure of inflation), gold is a couple of jumps away from matching its inflation-adjusted 1980 high $2,330. Silver, meanwhile, has much further to climb and would return over four times our money if it reached its former peak.
But the CPI is a poor measure of real inflation. Let’s use John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics calculations. His data are much closer to the real world, and the statistics are calculated the way they were during the Carter administration, stripped of later manipulations.
Check out how high gold and silver would soar if they adjust to this level of inflation:
Clearly, both metals would hand us an extraordinary return from current prices. Those are some admittedly high…Read more…
Why the US Dollar is (for Now) Still in Demand
By Bill Bonner
09/27/11 Buenos Aires, Argentina – Cash is king.
Ai yi yi…
Last week was the worst for investors in 3 years. Even gold melted down, as we thought it eventually would.
The only things to go up were US Treasury debt and the dollar. As expected, the Great Correction is doing its work.
So far, the stock market has held up as well as it has. But now it seems to be selling off. And gold is selling off too.
Rich people buy gold. They can afford to. They know the end of the dollar is coming — sooner or later. They can wait.
But the middle classes need dollars. Debtors need dollars. Consumers need dollars. Almost everybody needs dollars. In a correction, cash is king. And the king of kings is the dollar. Here’s CNN confirming what Dear Readers already know:
…the data [from the census] gave the first glimpse of what happened to middle-class incomes in the first decade of the millennium. While the earnings of middle-income Americans have barely budged since the mid 1970s, the new data showed that from 2000 to 2010, they actually regressed.
For American households in the middle of the pay scale, income fell to $49,445 last year, when adjusted for inflation, a level not seen since 1996.
And over the 10-year period, their income is down 7%.
“Economists talk about the lost decade in Japan. Well, with these 2010 data, we can confirm the lost decade for the American middle class,” said Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy
Read more: Economic News and Ideas on Debt, the Market, Gold, Oil, and Investing. http://dailyreckoning.com/#ixzz1ZD0C02yh
No comments:
Post a Comment