Singapore increases its gold reserves by almost 30% in January 2023:
I’m still buying and would like to thank those active in the paper gold market for suppressing the price of physical gold 
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So Singapore bought $2.5B of gold … out of their $440B total foreign reserves. About half a percent.
What is that telling us exactly?
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It tells me to buy physical gold, and I’m not the only one doing this:
You’re also allocating half a % of your reserves to more gold?
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Just topping it up as I go along now. Keeping it at 10% of my total portfolio which is going up nicely at the moment.
Depending on the size of your portfolio, that can get to be a pretty hefty stake to move around should the need arise…
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Large wheel barrow should do it
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Now I understand the original post! You were saying that Singapore is crazy to have such a small amount of their portfolio in gold. I get it now.
Good grief Charlie Brown!
We are going into a low inflation period with gold nearer the top than the bottom.
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Are we - when’s this going to happen then?
I don’t think we’ll have low price inflation. For one thing, we need to rebuild the U.S. Industrial base, as well as the infrastructure needed to support it, which means that no one will reduce prices anytime soon. Further, I suspect that the dollar will still be the world currency of preference for a long time and by a long shot, which is also inflationary. It is possible to have high unemployment and inflation at the same time, and I think that is where the Fed is leading us.
I wonder why you think that. Inflation is coming down, albeit slowly. And employment is at its highest level in 40 years.
Certainly we’re far from out of the woods, but (for instance) the spot cost of shipping a container of goods from China to the US has returned to pre-covid levels (it was 19x at one point) - but the cost between the US and Europe is still 2x (although that’s down from the peak.) Outrageous rent increases have come down - in some major cities rents are actually decreasing.
Counterbalancing that is the unemployment problem: it’s too low . That’s increasing competition for workers, particularly in logistics, transport, and warehousing, which make up a now significant segment of the economy. But the competition for workers ha hit everyone from the fast food industry to the (always and forever increasing) upper management ranks.
I know Powell is publicly worrying about this too, I just don’t see it, at least not on the scale of predicting stag-flation. We haven’t seen that for 45 years, and the causes were entirely different then.
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We have been following counter cyclical economics. This means inflation in the late 40s after WW II was high. There is a spike in 53 and 57.
This time the spike is during a similar period for different reasons. We might assume 2023 is 1948 for this comparison trying to line up events by the normalization of interest rates and an industrial build out.
Counter cyclical rates wont fall in 2024 or into the rest of the 2020s by that much. Why? Because the top bracket tax is not as high as in the 50s. This means monetary policy has a role. Interest rates head off inflation.
We will do more than head off inflation with fiscal policy. We will enrich most Americans.