Author Archive

  • Initial Jobless Claims Fall to 101-Month Low
    , July 24th, 2014 at 12:26 pm

    This morning we learned that initial unemployment claims fell to 284,000 last week. That’s the lowest number since February 18, 2006. Next Friday, we’ll get the jobs report for July.

  • The Gold Model Revisited
    , July 24th, 2014 at 9:31 am

    Four years ago, I wrote a post discussing my thoughts on how to build a model for the price of gold. That post received by far the most attention of anything I’ve written. I still get emails about it today.

    Over time, I’ve thought more about this issue, and I’ve altered my thinking somewhat. I also want to clarify some points from my original post. Instead of writing an addendum to it, though, I thought it would be clearer to rewrite the whole thing. What follows is the updated version.

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    One of the most controversial topics in investing is the price of gold. Fifteen years ago, gold dropped as low as $252 per ounce. The yellow metal then enjoyed a furious rally as it soared above $1,920 per ounce, easily outpacing the major stock-market indexes. Over the last three years, however, it has sunk back down to $1,300.

    Like Linus in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, many gold bugs hold out hope. They claim that any day now, gold will resume its march upward to $2,000, then $5,000 and then $10,000 per ounce. But my question is, “How can anyone reasonably calculate what the value of gold is?”

    For stocks, we have all sorts of ratios. Sure, those ratios can be off, but at least they’re something. With gold, we have nothing. No assets or liabilities. Not even a dividend. After all, gold is just a rock (OK, OK, an element). How can we even begin to analyze gold’s value? There’s an old joke that the price of gold is understood by exactly two people in the entire world. They both work for the Bank of England, and they disagree.

    In this post, I want to put forth a possible model for evaluating the price of gold. The purpose of the model isn’t to say where gold will go but to look at the underlying factors that drive the price of the precious metal. Let me caution you that as with any model, this one has its flaws, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. More importantly, I’ll explain why our model makes theoretical sense, rather than just mashing up numbers and seeing what correlates.

    The key to understanding the gold market is understanding that it’s not really about gold at all. Instead, it’s about currencies, and in our case that means the U.S. dollar. Properly understood, gold is really the anti-currency. It serves a valuable purpose in that it keeps all the other currencies honest—or exposes their dishonesty.

    This may sound odd, but every major currency has an interest rate tied to it. It doesn’t matter if it’s the euro, the pound or the yen. In essence, that interest rate is what the currency is all about.

    Before I get to my model, we need to take a slight detour and discuss a fascinating paradox known as Gibson’s Paradox. This is one the most puzzling topics in economics. Gibson’s Paradox is the observation that interest rates tend to follow the general price level and not the rate of inflation. That’s very strange, because it seems obvious that as inflation rises, interest rates ought to keep up. Similarly, as inflation falls back, rates should move back as well. But historically, that hasn’t been the case. Instead, interest rates have risen as prices have gone up, and only fallen when there’s been deflation.

    This paradox has totally baffled economists for years. Yet it really does exist. John Maynard Keynes called it “one of the most completely established empirical facts in the whole field of quantitative economics.” Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz said that “the Gibsonian Paradox remains an empirical phenomenon without a theoretical explanation.”

    Even many of today’s prominent economists have tried to tackle Gibson’s Paradox. In 1977, Robert Shiller and Jeremy Siegel wrote a paper on the topic. In 1988 Robert Barsky and none other than Larry Summers took on the paradox in their paper “Gibson’s Paradox and the Gold Standard.” It’s this paper that I want to focus on. (By the way, in this paper the authors thank future econo-bloggers Greg Mankiw and Brad DeLong.)

    Summers and Barsky agree that the Gibson Paradox does indeed exist. They also say that it’s not connected with nominal interest rates but with real (meaning after-inflation) interest rates. The catch is that the paradox only works under a gold standard. Absent that standard, the Gibson Paradox fades away.

    Now here’s my big idea: the Gibson Paradox doesn’t go away. It’s still here, just harder to see. It’s my hypothesis that Summers and Barsky were on to something, and that we can use their insight to build a model for the price of gold. The key is that gold is tied to real interest rates. Where I differ from them is that I use real short-term interest rates, whereas they focused on long-term rates.

    We’re getting closer to our model, but we need to take yet another detour, this time to Sweden to discuss the great Swedish economist Knut Wicksell. Wicksell was an interesting character who wrote on many topics, but he was deeply concerned with the theory of interest rates.

    Now Wicksell was an economist, and consequently he wasn’t always the clearest writer. He often seemed to get his interest rates confused. One economist referred to this as the “Wicksellian muddle.” But what’s important is that Wicksell believed there was a constant tug-of-war between two interest rates. One is the interest you see in the real world, the money rate. The other is an invisible phantom rate called the natural rate. While unseen, this natural rate does make its presence known in various ways. Wicksell believed that when the money rate drops below the natural rate, the economy grows and prices rise. When the opposite happens, the economy contracts and prices fall.

    I believe that if we take the Wicksellian natural rate and view it through the prism of a still-functioning Gibson’s Paradox, we can understand how gold’s value works.

    Here’s what Wicksell wrote (page 102):

    There is a certain rate of interest on loans which is neutral in respect to commodity prices, and tend neither to raise nor to lower them. This is necessarily the same as the rate of interest which would be determined by supply and demand if no use were made of money and all lending were effected in the form of real capital goods. It comes to much the same thing to describe it as the current value of the natural rate of interest on capital.

    Bingo! It’s that natural rate that’s the key to our model. In the first iteration of my model, I used 2%. That was wrong, but I was fooled because 2% works well enough as a long-term approximation of the Wicksellian natural rate. But the natural rate is not a constant.

    Here’s how it works. Whenever the dollar’s real short-term interest rate is below the Wicksellian natural rate, gold rallies. Whenever the real short-term rate is above the natural rate, then gold falls. Just as the Knut Man describes. When gold holds perfectly still, you know you’re at the natural rate. It’s my contention that this was what the Gibson Paradox was all about, since the price of gold is tied to the general price level.

    Now we get to the messy parts. There’s a lot of volatility in this relationship. According to my original model, for every one percentage point real rates differ from the natural rate, gold moves by eight times that amount per year. So if the real rates are at 1% and the natural rate is at 2%, gold will move up at an 8% annualized rate. If real rates are 2% below the natural rate, then gold will move up at a 16% rate (that was about the story from 1999 to 2011). Conversely, if the real rate jumps to 1% above the natural rate, then gold will drop at an 8% rate.

    Why eight fold? There, I don’t know. When I did the back test, that number fit the best. I assume it’s a risk factor to compensate for owning gold.

    Here’s the graph from my original model, bearing in mind that I used 2% as the natural rates.

    image993

    I realize I have a problem with using an unspecified Wicksellian natural interest rate, since I’m using one variable to explain another variable. That’s not quite kosher in the model-building biz. Perhaps I could use the price of gold and current interest rates to reverse-engineer the Wicksellian natural rate. Gold has been falling for the last three years, even though real short-term rates have been quite low. In fact, negative. The natural rate may have fallen as well.

    Let me make it clear that this is just a model, and I’m not trying to explain 100% of gold’s movement. Gold is subject to a high degree of volatility and speculation. Geopolitical events, for example, can impact the price of gold. I would also imagine that at some point, gold could break a replacement price where it became so expensive that another commodity would replace its function in industry, and the price would suffer.

    Instead of explaining every aspect of gold’s behavior, my aim is to pinpoint the underlying factors that are strongly correlated with it.

    There are a few key takeaways.

    The first and perhaps the most significant is that gold is not tied to inflation. It’s tied to low real rates, which are often the by-product of inflation. Rising gold and low inflation isn’t a contradiction. We had both for a few years.

    The second point is that when real rates are low, the price of gold can rise very, very rapidly.

    The third is that when real rates are high, gold can fall very, very quickly.

    Fourth, there’s no reason for there to be a relationship between equity prices and gold (like the Dow-to-gold ratio).

    The final point is that the price of gold is essentially political. If a central banker has the will to raise real rates as Volcker did 35 years ago, then the price of gold can be crushed.

    (You can sign up for my free newsletter here.)

  • Morning News: July 24, 2014
    , July 24th, 2014 at 6:48 am

    EU Floats Ban on Russian Bank Financing in New Sanctions

    European Central Bank Says Website Hacked, No Sensitive Data Affected

    Premarket: Euro Pulls Off 8-Month Lows; China PMI Helps Emerging Stocks

    SEC Tells S&P It Could Face Enforcement Action

    Ford Profit Tops Estimates Europe Delivers Surprise Gain

    Murdoch’s Bid for Time Warner Threatens the Golden Age of Television

    Facebook Answers Critics With Mobile-Ad Surge

    Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri Says Has Strong Momentum in Europe Sales

    LG Electronics Beats Q2 Estimates as Mobile Division Turns Profit

    Roche Profit Dented by Currencies

    Unilever Sales Growth Misses Estimates on Asian Slowdown

    American Apparel Names New Board in Step to Resolve Leadership Crisis

    Twitter Workers: Mostly White, Mostly Male

    Jeff Carter: Inflation or No Inflation?

    Edward Harrison: Apple’s Shift Into China Shows the Company’s Masterful Execution

    Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

  • Earnings from CA Technologies and Qualcomm
    , July 23rd, 2014 at 9:07 pm

    After the bell, we got earnings reports from two of our tech stocks. CA Technologies ($CA) reported fiscal Q1 earnings of 65 cents per share which is five cents better than expectations. Revenue fell 2% to $1.069 billion. This was the ninth-straight quarter in which revenue fell.

    The company released its guidance for this fiscal year, which ends in March 2015. They see revenues falling by 1% to 2%, and they expect earnings to range between $2.42 and $2.49 per share. The consensus on Wall Street had been for $2.48 per share. For last year, CA earned $3.07 per share. I’ve been patient with CA but I’m not happy with these results.

    Qualcomm ($QCOM) reported fiscal Q3 earnings of $1.44 per share. That easily beat Wall Street’s forecast of $1.22 per share. Qualcomm’s business in China is going very well. But several companies there “are not fully complying with their contractual obligations.” As a result, the company had weak guidance for the current quarter. For fiscal Q4, Qualcomm sees earnings ranging between $1.20 and $1.35 which is below Wall Street’s consensus of $1.39 per share.

  • Nearly All of Buffett’s Wealth Came After Age 50
    , July 23rd, 2014 at 12:02 pm

    The stock market reached yet another all-time high today. The S&P 500 has been as high as 1,989.23 this morning. We’re soon going to have to start talking about 2,000.

    On our Buy List, Microsoft ($MSFT) is doing well this morning. After yesterday’s earnings report, I wasn’t sure what it would do today. The stock is currently up to $45.34 which is a gain of 1.1%. The shares closed at $41.67 only two weeks ago.

    At the weak end, shares of McDonald’s ($MCD) are down after some downgrades. This comes a day after missing earnings. MCD is currently off by 1.2%.

    After the close, we’ll get earnings reports from CA Technologies ($CA) and Qualcomm ($QCOM). Shares of QCOM have perked up recently.

    Yesterday, Bill Ackman delivered his much-anticipated presentation on Herbalife ($HLF). The advanced billing was that this will floor investors and make us realize what a terrible stock HLF is. Well, the presentation flopped and HLF soared more than 25%. Not bad for one day.

    My take is that Herbalife is slimy but legit. I wouldn’t invest in them, but I wouldn’t short them either.

    I wanted to share two snippets from Morgan Housel’s latest. Morgan’s a great guy and one of the best writers on finance around. His column is titled: “I Prefer to Keep Things Simple.”

    The two sentences are:

    “Of Warren Buffett’s $63 billion net worth, $62.7 billion was added after his 50th birthday”

    “The single best stock to own of the last 50 years was cigarette giant Altria . Its stock compounded at an average of nearly 20% a year for half a century—enough to turn $1,000 into more than $8 million.”

  • Legacy of Benjamin Graham
    , July 23rd, 2014 at 10:29 am

    Here’s a video on Benjamin Graham, the father of investment analysis.

    (h/t Cullen Roche, Ben Carlson)

  • Morning News: July 23, 2014
    , July 23rd, 2014 at 6:55 am

    BOE Vote 9-0 as Some MPC See Lower Risks From Rate Increase

    Bank of Spain Says Growth Accelerated in Second Quarter

    Chinese Banks Seen Discounting Mortgage Rates, Survey Shows

    China Detains Employees of Suspect Meat Seller

    SEC Poised to End $1 a Share For Some Money Funds

    Deutsche Bank Falls as N.Y. Fed Is Said to Fault Reports

    Comcast Profit Boosted by Internet Subscriber Growth, NBC

    Northrop Profit Rises 4.7% But Sales Decline

    Daimler’s Mercedes Widens Margin as Sedans Help Chase BMW

    LG Display Sees Q2 Profit Plummet 55.4% YoY

    Telenor Says 2014 Profit Margin to Improve as Earnings Rise

    LinkedIn Will Buy Bizo for $175 Million

    Herbalife Rallies in Face of New Attack by Ackman

    Cullen Roche: Investment Myth #1: You Too Can Become Warren Buffett

    Joshua Brown: 361 Weekly Research Briefing

    Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

  • Confusing Earnings Report from Microsoft
    , July 22nd, 2014 at 7:53 pm

    After the closing bell, Microsoft ($MSFT) released a rather confusing earnings report for their fiscal Q4. The software giant earned 55 cents per share which was five cents below consensus. The stock dropped sharply in the after-hours market. Then we got a closer look at the fine print, and adjusting for a three-cent charge, the bottom line was 58 cents per share. So bad, but not that bad.

    Digging further we learned that MSFT’s quarterly revenue rose a healthy 18% to $23.4 billion. Not bad at all. For the entire fiscal year, revenue rose 12% to $86.8 billion. The shares eventually recovered in the after-hours market, and were even up a bit. I think the company is still in the glow of the new CEO and the announced job cuts.

    The big problem is Nokia’s handset business which is a money loser. The division could turn into a winner in the long-term, but the outlook is rather iffy at the moment. This is what the WSJ had to say:

    Mr. Nadella has touted his vision for Microsoft as a “mobile-first, cloud-first” company. So far, the company has had much more success on second part of that mission statement.

    Even with the Nokia purchase, Microsoft sells fewer than 5% of all new smartphones purchased world-wide. The company said Thursday that it sold about 5.8 million Nokia smartphones since it acquired Nokia’s handset business in April. By comparison, rival Apple Inc. sold 35.2 million iPhones in the three months ended June 28.

    The cloud-related businesses are faring much better. Microsoft said Office 365 sales more than doubled in the quarter. Total cloud revenue, which includes its Azure computing service, is on pace to generate $4.4 billion in annual revenue.

    Microsoft also is posting heady growth in older products like its database software, called SQL Server, and the Windows operating software for computer servers. Microsoft’s revenue from server-software licenses rose 14% in the fourth quarter.

    The company also highlighted strong sales of the software to small-and-medium-sized businesses. Those smaller companies aren’t historically Microsoft’s best customers.

    Mr. Nadella, on a conference call with analysts, sketched out how he expected to invest money in the “core” areas like the Windows operating system and its software to help businesses and consumers live and work more efficiently.

  • S&P 500 Hits All-Time High
    , July 22nd, 2014 at 12:47 pm

    Despite all the troubling geopolitical news this month, the S&P 500 continues its march higher. The index had made an all-time high of 1,985.59 on July 3rd. Today we broke through that and have been as high as 1,986.24. (Understandably, I can see why the market would be shy around 1,987).

    big07222014

  • Inflation Chilled out in June
    , July 22nd, 2014 at 12:11 pm

    There had been a minor uptrend in core CPI recently that has apparently come to an end. The government reported this morning that headline CPI rose 0.3% last month while core prices rose by just 0.1%. Personally, I would like to see inflation creep up into the Fed’s target range.