the interdependence of prices - meetupfiles.meetup.com/84585/jason ruspini on gold asset...
TRANSCRIPT
Gold and The Interdependence of Prices
Jason Ruspini, Vice President, Conquest Capital Group
When Does Gold Rise?
• When people are irrational or have irrational expectations of
societal breakdown?
• When people have rational fears about policy failure and
default?
• When people anticipate inflation?
• When gold is money and people anticipate deflation?
• When liquidity is not tight?
• When real returns are low?
• What about sentiment and seasonality?
Is Gold A Fear Gauge?
• On average, no. Gold acts as a fear gauge periodically, but
just as often it trades with “risk”
and the global growth trade.
One Month Rolling Correlation of Gold to VIX
-1-0.8-0.6-0.4-0.2
00.20.40.60.8
1
Jan-
07
Mar
-07
May
-07
Jul-0
7
Sep-
07
Nov
-07
Jan-
08
Mar
-08
May
-08
Jul-0
8
Sep-
08
Nov
-08
Jan-
09
Mar
-09
May
-09
Jul-0
9
Sep-
09
Nov
-09
Jan-
10
Mar
-10
May
-10
Is Gold A Fear Gauge?
• Averages can be deceptive and gold’s correlation shifts tend
to be sudden.
Correlation of Gold to Dollar, "Fear Gauge" Indicators and S&P 500January 2000 –
Present
Daily Correlation of ReturnsAverage Absolute Value of 10-day Rolling Correlation
Dollar Index -41.9% 57.8%VIX 0.2% 41.0%High Yield Spreads -0.7% 37.7%S&P 500 -2.7% 41.0%
Does Gold Hedge Against Inflation?
• You often hear that it does not because the CPI has outrun
gold since 1980.
• This is a cherry‐picked statistic corresponding to gold’s 1980
peak. Pick any other look‐back:
Cumulative Increase Through December 2009CPI Gold Gold/CPI Increase Ratio
From:Jan-70 476.9% 3113.9% 6.53Jan-75 320.1% 514.8% 1.61Jan-80 185.0% 143.8% 0.78Jan-85 105.4% 254.2% 2.41Jan-90 71.8% 176.3% 2.45Jan-95 44.5% 197.8% 4.44Jan-00 28.5% 298.5% 10.46Jan-05 13.3% 155.6% 11.74
However, Gold Does Not Display A Strong Relationship with Inflation Expectations In Short Time Frames
• Gold has low daily correlation to TIPS implied inflation rates.
• By month, gold does not do particularly well when inflation is
relatively high:
Monthly Gold Price Changes By Inflation Rate, Apr 1968 - Dec 2009
Sum Number of Months AverageMonths where inflation:> 4% 180.4% 225 0.80%<= 4% 232.3% 276 0.84%
Gold Does Show A Strong Relationship With Real Rates of Return
• Interest rates must be taken into account, not just inflation.• Rates also reflect the long term growth prospects of the
economy.• Real rates represent the opportunity cost of holding a
relatively useless asset.
Monthly Gold Price Changes By Real RateApr 1968 - Dec 2009
Sum Number of Months AverageMonths where real rate:< 3% 414.0% 268 1.54%>= 3% -1.3% 233 -0.01%
Gold as Money
• In the 2010s, gold’s relative uselessness is a political boon.
Unlike other commodities, very few “folks”
are hurt by rising
gold prices.
• What is the use of paper money that pays near zero interest?
You can’t use Yen at the deli either. Gold, a negative carry
currency, is again more attractive when rates are low.
• While gold does well when real rates of return are low, to the
extent that it is monetized, it can do well in deflation as well.
This is what happened in the 1930s and prior depressions.
• Central bank actions and gold as a percentage of global fx
reserves, which is still especially low in China, suggest that, at
the margin, gold is being and will continue to be monetized.
Gold’s Dirty Secrets?• Monetary base and bank excess reserves charts are actually not
that scary . The inflation implicit in government debt is, however.
• There are approximately 160,000 metric tonnes
(5.2 billion ounces)
of mined gold on earth, and approximately 2,500 tonnes
are
discovered each year. But this rate may be slowing, and there is
approximately 2,500 tonnes
per year of non‐speculator demand for
jewelry and industrial use.
• Have a sell bias when liquidity dries up. Monitor LIBOR or LIBOR‐
OIS. A drop in liquidity in financial markets is not the same as
general price deflation.
• Have a sell bias when real returns rise, e.g. when bond vigilantes
become active in a depressed economy. (Will this always work?)
• Lots of fake “cover story indicators.”
Gold has been a “crowded
trade”
since the high 800s. Talking‐head pseudo‐sagacity. But
“crowded trade”
can be quantified to some extent through DSI and
CFTC COT data.
Is Gold a “Bubble”?• It will become a bubble at some point, but there is little comparative evidence of
this now. Household gold assets are not out‐of‐control.
• Tulip Bubble: 6000%, South Sea Bubble: 733% (“Index”
had 131 year drawdown).
Seasonality of Gold
Seasonality, Jan 1986 - May 2010
-3.00%
-2.00%
-1.00%
0.00%
1.00%
2.00%
3.00%
4.00%
5.00%
6.00%
7.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
GoldWheatS&P 500Dollar Index
• Gold exhibits strength in September. Why? How significant?
Interdependence of Prices
• To what extent does gold appear irrational because its value
is mainly extrinsic, that is, it reflects relatively low real returns
and opportunity cost?• This way of thinking is natural in the fx
world where all trades
are two‐sided, and the idealized one‐sided currency , e.g.
Dollar Index, is a weighted average of two‐sided rates.• [Fed model‐]• The misallocation in the housing bubble was to some extent
already a mispricing
of money in the form of interest rates.
What was the “right”
price for housing given the price of
money?• Do people who claim that assets exhibit “irrational”
moves
have a clear idea of what level of volatility would be
“rational”, especially given such cross‐influences?
How Volatile Should Stocks Be?
• The Dividend Discount Model predicts that stocks should become more
volatile as interest rates decline. When (dividend) growth rates and
interest rates are both stuck near zero, this “fundamental”
model predicts
very high volatility. With 10 year rates at 3.0% and growth near 1%, a ‐
0.20% change in dividend (earnings) growth rate expectations is sufficient
to provoke a one‐day 10% decline.
• Stocks tend to extrapolate the last data point into perpetuity, and two‐
part dividend models try to correct for this, but to what extent
does the
rate term already act like a long‐term reversion term, reflecting average
economic growth?
• When stocks are driven by “top‐down”
policy, they are more likely to
behave idiosyncratically and wildly, as opposed to the more predictable
average of many “bottom‐ups.”
• There is a wealth effect and natural self‐perpetuation in stock prices
through consumption.
• Why shouldn’t stocks be “commoditized”
as a relatively risky asset? Why
is strong dollar / weak stocks unnatural?
Is There a Long‐Termism
Fallacy?
• Luis Lowenstein: ''you will have made a judgment about that company and its
businesses over the long term: what kind of products they make, who the management
is, what kind of competition there is. No sensible investor would change his mind in a
few days or a few weeks.''
• One absolutely wants to minimize transaction costs of all kinds and avoid over‐trading,
but beyond that, might there be a fallacy here, covered over by sagacious‐sounding,
politicized rhetoric?
• Even if prices change glacially, if you want to maintain a portfolio limited to 30 stocks
out of a universe of 6000, it is easy to see how a sensible person might change the
"best ideas" list with some frequency. The more prices change, the more frequent
portfolio changes would be in order from a valuation standpoint.
• To what extent can asset prices ever represent some hermetically
sealed, one‐sided
meaning or value? There is always some discount factor or relative valuation at play.
• Crucially, such statements make the assumption that one is smarter than the market,
and so if prices move against you, it's just irrational "noise".
• Short‐termism
incentive effects have little to do with short‐term trading. Quite the
opposite.
Would a Transaction Tax Make Stocks Less Volatile, or More?
• A transaction tax might decrease daily volatility, but,
politically speaking, “folks”
do not actually care about daily
volatility. They care about longer‐terms booms and busts in
asset and useful commodity prices that short term trading
naturally has less to do with since such traders both buy and
sell.• If buying and selling are more expensive, trends should be
more persistent. This is intuitive, but also makes sense
insofar as autocorrelation rises when liquidity declines.
Booms and busts will cause longer‐lasting pain and
dislocation.• The easiest way to achieve a shock “20 standard deviation”
move is to just not mark (or mis‐mark) for a while. Deferral
of pricing is vastly more likely to originate an explosion large
enough to affect the underlying economy. (Flash Crash only
hurt those who were stopped‐out.)
Would a Transaction Tax Make Stocks Less Volatile, or More?
• Deferral of pricing, not active trading, played a large role in the
corporate credit crisis. Social security and entitlement programs
are also “off balance sheet”
debt. At least banks failed to predict
the future. Governments failed to predict the past. The basic
demographic and longevity trend has been apparent since at least
the 1960s. Each case had deferral and agency problems.
• Would taxing transactions discourage the formation of self‐fulfilling
prophesies? Unlikely, as one‐way nature of the trade would still be
clear. [Krugman
quote‐] Traders would actually be less willing to
take profits, and would have less incentive to catch falling knives.