2019 is looking like one of those either/or years, where growing financial instability leads to either a 2008-style financial crash or another round of asset inflation. In Jay Taylor’s latest newsletter, he concludes that both scenarios are good for gold:
Which Safe Haven Markets Will Dominate in 2019?
If we are, as I believe, on the precipice of a major decline in stocks, the question in my mind as we head into 2019 is to what extent U.S. Treasuries will continue to be the main go-to market in the risk-off trade and to what extent might a loss of confidence in the dollar as the world’s reserve currency lead to a rise in the price of gold?
The answer requires an examination of likely flows of money in 2019 and beyond, and those flows are very much determined by the point at which we exist in the current credit cycle.
We are in one of the longest credit cycles on record, with 2018 being the tenth year of expansion. GoldMoney’s Alasdair Macleod quite correctly points out that in the late stages of the credit cycle money flows out of the financial sector into the real economy and with the flow out of financial assets, interest rates begin to rise.
10-Year U.S. Treasury yields rose from 1.385% on July 5, 2016, to 3.227% on October 1, 2018. The 10-year rate has corrected to 2.652% as of this writing, but it is clear that with the real economy doing better, interest rates have risen, which in turn has put downward pressure on stocks. With increased volatility in U.S. equities, the recent decline in rates reflects the safe haven risk off attitude.
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