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S&P500 Priced in Gold

pricedingold.com

31–40 of 55 posts

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#31
post #28
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a "measurement of value" they both suck. Gold is (extremely) volatile and currency inflates. Well, you can't do much to correct for the speculation noise in gold. But maybe we can attack from the other side. Maybe we could record prices for various representative products in a giant data set somewhere and calculate and record, I dunno, a "price index" that normalizes the prices to a value that is stable over time.…

Unfortunately Goodhart's law has rendered official inflation measures borderline useless, as anyone who has been shopping for food for the last decade can tell you.

Taking your example in good faith: Gold is four times as expensive today as it was at this time in 2015. Has food seen a 4x increase? No, right? So gold is volatile on a level way beyond inflation. QED.

Are CPI measurements difficult? Sure. It takes a bunch of expert eggheads and a lot of shouting to come to consensus. Still better than trusting some kind of magical commodity market to tell you.

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#32
post #8

Totally misleading, S&P with dividends reinvested blows away gold since 1950 or 1971. S&P 500 Investment (with Dividends Reinvested) Historical data shows that $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 at the start of 1950, with all dividends reinvested, would grow to approximately $3,836,763 by the end of 2025. Gold provided pure price appreciation (no yield or dividends). The multiplier is about 124.7× ($4,360 ÷ $35), or an…

The point of this entire website isn't about gold vs equity as an investment, it's about gold vs fiat currency as a superior measurement of value. https://pricedingold.com/about/

It's not very convincing, though: there's a huge runup in gold prices (as is often the case) between 2023 and the present, and a long do-nothing period before that (also often the case). The major consumers of gold are about: 50% jewelry, 10% industrial, 20% central banks, a large run-up from about 10% in the 2010s.

I like to think about the inherent contradictions of goldbugs going long on central bank portfolio policy: they both tend to distrust the central bank but in a way the central bank activities partially endorse their habits, and are the source of recent appreciation and thus accusations of "hidden" inflation. But central banks operate in an anarchic world system where they need something even independent of reserves held in other sovereign currencies, I presume most gold bugs are holding ETFs in an existing financial system (which is non-orthogonal: if you assume a financial system, why not avail yourself of the superior alternatives?) or have it in a safe in their house which has some other obvious problems.

I hold no gold, if I want hydraulic and non-volatile inflation compensation, it's quite simple: short-dated sovereign debt, aka the humble money market fund, which can be seen as the lower-fee version of the checking account. Nobody likes being a sucker, holding debt for below the time value of money, including changes in nominal value. It has immense price discovery pressure, and it finds its level nicely. If I were to hold gold, I would need some viable theory about how much I should hold to be de-correlated from other assets to be worthwhile. Maybe if I was exposed to jewelry costs and wanted to hedge them.

See https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/markets-and-economy/market..., https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/other-publications/ire/focus...

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#33
It's tricky because it's unclear if the S&P500 will halve (Market pessimism), or if Gold price will double (currency devaluation)...

I need to see both of them priced in loaves of bread.

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#35
post #31
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Goodhart's law has rendered official inflation measures borderline useless, as anyone who has been shopping for food for the last decade can tell you.

Taking your example in good faith: Gold is four times as expensive today as it was at this time in 2015. Has food seen a 4x increase? No, right? So gold is volatile on a level way beyond inflation. QED. Are CPI measurements difficult? Sure. It takes a bunch of expert eggheads and a lot of shouting to come to consensus. Still better than trusting some kind of magical commodity market to tell you.

You don't even need to trust CPI alone when looking in history, where things have evened out a bit: we have historical short-term bond yield data, even the yield curve: people bidding on short periods with the safest debtor expecting changes in nominal value.

Not to suggest CPI is redundant, there's a reason why central bankers read it after all. For one, it's the most timely data they have. But it's impossible to nudge it year after year -- accumulative error -- without it become obviously decoupled from other data, including the long-term bond market data. It just so happens commodities are the wrong yardstick.

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#36
post #8

Totally misleading, S&P with dividends reinvested blows away gold since 1950 or 1971. S&P 500 Investment (with Dividends Reinvested) Historical data shows that $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 at the start of 1950, with all dividends reinvested, would grow to approximately $3,836,763 by the end of 2025. Gold provided pure price appreciation (no yield or dividends). The multiplier is about 124.7× ($4,360 ÷ $35), or an…

> Gold provided pure price appreciation (no yield or dividends).

Who's your alchemist? Get a better one.

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#37

It's tricky because it's unclear if the S&P500 will halve (Market pessimism), or if Gold price will double (currency devaluation)... I need to see both of them priced in loaves of bread.

If currency devalue, S&P500 would go up since equities will hold value better than cash.

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of this entire website isn't about gold vs equity as an investment, it's about gold vs fiat currency as a superior measurement of value. https://pricedingold.com/about/

It's not very convincing, though: there's a huge runup in gold prices (as is often the case) between 2023 and the present, and a long do-nothing period before that (also often the case). The major consumers of gold are about: 50% jewelry, 10% industrial, 20% central banks, a large run-up from about 10% in the 2010s. I like to think about the inherent contradictions of goldbugs going long on central bank portfolio pol…

When people talk about inflation, I don't think they're referring to just CPI, but asset inflation too. Things like equities, real estate, gold/silver/platinum, bitcoin, etc.

These have been outpacing CPI because they're levered by cheap debt, brought to you by central bank actions that keep rates low so governments can play the same levered games with their own runaway fiscal policies.

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#39
The price of gold pre-1971 was always a fantasy as there was no free market for it, due to the policy rate sitting on it at $35/oz.

The price of gold before 1933 (EO 6102) was also not a terribly good indicator, as the friction of taking physical delivery of it also kept it suppressed in most circumstances, with explosive swings in times of crisis.

Arguably it's even more gamed after 1971 as it's not even used for exchange, and has a ton of rehypothecation and elaborate derivative networks.

Gold's drawback was always its physicality. Arguably its heyday was before the invention of the telegraph, when at least the expectation was that money was going to be slow, and the only way to move it across most distances was physically, unless you had some handy Knights Templar or Hawala network handy.

That we still cling to it despite all of this is a good indicator of just how fucked up fiat is though. Thankfully, we have a better alternative network being built out.

Re: S&P500 Priced in Gold

#40
post #8

Totally misleading, S&P with dividends reinvested blows away gold since 1950 or 1971. S&P 500 Investment (with Dividends Reinvested) Historical data shows that $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 at the start of 1950, with all dividends reinvested, would grow to approximately $3,836,763 by the end of 2025. Gold provided pure price appreciation (no yield or dividends). The multiplier is about 124.7× ($4,360 ÷ $35), or an…

Great! We can start trading with each other in stock notes. I can't wait to buy my next round of groceries with a 0.1 SPY note! The ones I don't use will pay dividends!

If only there were a digital asset that had a fixed supply to prevent inflation that nobody could control who could spend what (to avoid unjust debanking) which was highly divisible so that you could spend large or small amounts, and because it's digital it could be spent very rapidly across long distances using the magic of the Internet. And if only it's governance model wasn't subject to the corruption seen in governments and private banks alike.

I bet that thing would be a pretty useful monetary tool, even if it were attacked, as one might expect by all of the government and banks around the world who were trying to cling to the power they have by virtue of having captured the ability to print money and use it when it is most valuable, fresh off the press.

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