Thursday, October 8, 2009

Is Gold the best hedge against the inflation?

My positive opinion on precious metals has materialized in the new historical highs for gold and cyclical for silver. The public attention has been largely attracted by the gold installing above 1000 dollars mark. As for me, I'm happy with just new cyclical highs in silver. Really, is the gold the best hedger against the inflation (or should we say reflation) where we are supposed to be ?
Looking at gold to silver ratio we see that gold is a strong outperformer in a deflationary environment, as the one we have experienced last fall. Since the reflation policy has started to work, the silver has started to outperform gold.




















We can even try to judge the "quality" of the reflation policy regarding the eurozone on the chart with gold priced in euros: the recent top in dollar is far from confirmation.



Or to find  which country is the biggest bénéficier of the policy of global reflation, looking at gold priced in Australian dollars:




















Even Dow  has managed to do better since the reflation attempt has begun:



















So, my conclusion is that gold as well as cash is the best investment during the periods of credit stress which we have seen during second half of 2008 and 1Q of 2009.  But for the period of  "reflation" gold under performs other assets (except cash)  and will even further under perform silver should we enter a period of higher inflation.

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