Gavekal-IS

Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system in the early 1970s, gold has experienced four major bull markets. Didier and Michael say when you align each rally from its starting point, today’s surge looks tame next to the explosions of the 1970s, but almost identical to the steady climb between 2001 and 2012.

In 2008, French senator Maurice Faure—signatory of the Treaty of Rome—was asked: what is power? His reply was disarmingly simple: “Power is when you have it.” No hedging, no abstractions. The same could be said of beauty, youth, strength—and of a nation or its currency. In this report, Didier explores the concept of ultimate power as expressed through financial asset pricing.

On a global basis, political tensions continue to swing from green to amber to bright red, and then back again. For fundamentally oriented investors, this raises the question of whether politics can ever truly be ignored. In this note, Didier shows how economics trumps politics most of the time, but not all of the time.

Every investor dreams the same dream: buy at the bottom, sell at the top. On that score, gold recently hit another all-time high, together with several equity markets. So are you tempted to cash in? Didier points to history and says, not so fast. After all, behavioral finance shows that market peaks bring a rush of euphoria, lasting weeks, sometimes a few months.

The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce argued that abduction—not deduction or induction—represents the primary mode of human reasoning. For Didier, abduction lies behind scientific discovery, as well as most economic, financial and political analysis. In this piece he applies this insight to current dilemmas for portfolio managers.

The single number that keeps governments solvent is nominal economic growth, as it corresponds directly to their ability to fund themselves. For investors, however, the real question is the growth mix: how much of nominal growth comes from a real expansion, and how much from inflation? That split decides whether equities or gold are the better option. In this piece, Didier extends this basic insight into an investment strategy.