Gold Is Laughing at Us

Foster Kamer of The New York Observer has a good piece on gold. We spoke for quite some time recently about the eye-popping run gold has had and how this has had many people worried that it is a bubble.

“Gold has proven to be a superman investment. It can leap over buildings and do things that investments aren’t supposed to do. And it’s laughing at us," I explained.

So is gold a bubble? Both Dennis Gartman and I say that despite certain bubblicious signs—people asking about gold at cocktail parties—it doesn't appear to be. If anything, all the bubble talk may have kept gold from actually bubbling.

From the Observer:

"Many of Wall Street’s major institutional investors were still reluctant to get in on it," Mr. Carney said. “It kills them to think they’ve passed up a profit, but they’re worried that anything that’s gone up 200 percent over two years could go down 200 percent over two weeks.

"It doesn’t make sense that every piece of news is 'buy gold.' "

Dennis Gartman agreed: "Ask the average Wall Street wiseguy if they’re bullish on gold. They’ll say, ‘Yeah, you gotta be, we got money problems [with the dollar].’ If you ask them how many hold gold? 'Very few,' " which is where he sees a weakness and potential for an overvalued asset.

“It’s a bubble in interest, not in owning," he said, "It’s fascinating: Everybody’s bullish, but very few are long."

A more analytical take can be found today at Zerohedge. If you love charts, you'll love the post. Here's how it wraps up:

"As a percentage of assets, gold ownership remains negligible vis-à-vis assets such as equities and bonds. Ownership of gold is likely to be less than 2 percent of global investable assets. This is in marked contrast to the end of gold’s last bull market, when gold and gold stocks accounted for over 20 percent of global assets.

Gold remains badly analyzed, under-owned, and under-appreciated. This will change in the coming months and years, when the importance of gold as an investment and currency diversification and as a store of wealth is appreciated again."

The macroeconomic environment looks promising for gold. Central banks around the world are fighting the deleveraging cycle by inflating and intervening. A new round of quantitative easing or an announcement of much higher inflation goals should be very promising for gold.