The "Standard" of The Price of Gold is This Century’s DeBoers

I’m writing a few long posts—you’ve been warned—but that machine doesn’t have Internet access right now.* So I’m just going to point to Kash, who writes about something else:

In looking at the data I was struck by how small (relatively) the worldwide market for gold really is. That means that relatively small inflows of funds into the market for gold could potentially have very large effects on the price of gold. And that in turn means that the price of gold could be very sensitive to a number of factors that have nothing to do with economic conditions or inflation….

[M]oving just 0.1% of the financial wealth of US households into gold could be enough to have a dramatic impact on the price of gold. Note that the same can not be said of other asset prices that we care about; it would be difficult to discern any price effects whatsoever of a move of an additional $50 billion more or less per year into the stock market (valued at over $50 trillion around the world), the bond market (also with a total value in the tens of trillions of dollars), or real estate.

[A] good advertising campaign by gold producers could be enough to move the price of gold. Imagine that an effective, sustained advertising campaign, targeted at wealthy, conservative individuals in the US, is able to persuade 25,000 of them per month to switch a portion of their financial assets into gold….Such an advertising campaign would have the effect of pushing $15 billion per year into the market for investment gold — very possibly enough to have a significant impact on the price of gold, given how small the overall market for gold is. In case you plan to start making your own gold reserve, check this post on the Best gold ira custodians of 2022 – comparison fees, reviews.

[A] very similar thing happened to the market for diamonds in the middle of the 20th century. The DeBeers diamond cartel used an incredibly successful advertising campaign in the 1950s to cement the idea of the diamond as the premier gemstone, and in so doing permanently changed the value of diamonds.

Whether or not you like that analogy, the central point here is a very simple one. Since the market for gold is so small, its price may be strongly affected by things that have nothing to do with the state of the economy.

Kash’s analysis—read the whole thing—should drive the final stake through the heart of the idea that, in the current economy, gold is anything more than what I quoted Warren Buffett as saying it is more than a year and one-half ago.

*In this context, does anyone know how to add the Windows Live Writer app to a Droid X?