Skip to main content

Gold and "Summers-Barsky" theory

There was an excellent article on gold by John Dizard in the past weekend edition of the Financial Times.

Dizard's column piece, though brief, gave an informed overview of the metal's ongoing bull run, while assessing the possibility of a coming correction in the gold price.

In, "Gold is a bright prospect for the bold", Dizard draws on the opinion of one long-bullish portfolio manager and the ideas found in the "Summers-Barsky" theory to chart gold's future course.

"Mr Palmedo is one of the adherents of what gold people call “Summers-Barsky”, a theory of the relationship between gold and real returns on investment developed by two Harvard professors in 1985. One of them, Lawrence Summers, went on to become US Treasury secretary, president of Harvard University and, ultimately, an FT columnist.

Summers-Barsky, as described in their dense econometric paper, tracked and modelled the price of gold from 1730 to 1985 against interest rates, price indices and, for the latter years, equity returns.

Essentially, the professors found an inverse relationship between the price of gold and the real returns people can earn on their financial and industrial capital. As they put it: “The willingness to hold the stock of gold depends on the rate of return available on alternative assets.” Gold is a way to preserve capital, not increase it. If you can earn high rates or profits, you will be induced to sell gold and invest it in productive capital or interest-bearing paper."

Have a look at the full article at the link above.

Meanwhile, if there is a gold correction coming in the near future, it will likely have to wait another day.

Bloomberg reports that gold and platinum reached new record highs in earlier trading today, as a declining dollar fueled demand for precious metals and agricultural commodities.

Still, with speculative long positions increasing in gold, some analysts are becoming more cautious and increasingly expectant of an upcoming correction. We'll be watching.

Popular posts from this blog

How to "Pull the Trigger" on Your Trading Ideas

In our last post, I quoted hedge fund manager, Jim Leitner on the importance of following up on your investment ideas.  Today I'd like to follow up and share some thoughts on how you can learn to consistently "pull the trigger" on your best trading setups and investing ideas. In order to help you do that, we'll take from the best and offer up key insights from interviews with top traders and trading psychologists like Alan Farley, Brett Steenbarger, and Doug Hirschhorn .  Now before we get to their key insights on overcoming trading anxiety and pulling the trigger on your trading ideas, let's remember what Jim Leitner said in his interview: "Learn to love to listen to people and when you hear something interesting, follow up on it. Don't just think, "Well that's an interesting idea" only to find out a year later that the company you could've bought shares in is now up 500-fold. You never want to say woulda, coulda, shoulda...

Market Wizard, Steve Clark on Trading: Grow Your Equity Curve

Trading wisdom recap: Steve Clark , founder of Omni Partners, was featured in Jack Schwager's 2012 book, Hedge Fund Market Wizards .  Clark's interview with Schwager provided us with some valuable trading insights; "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Steve Clark" was one of our most popular posts ever. If I had to pick my favorite sections from Clark's chapter, it would be boiled down to these two concepts: "Do more of what works (and less of what doesn't work)" and "Manage your equity curve". Here's his full quote on the supreme importance of growing your equity curve :  "Your job as a trader is to make the line of your equity curve go from bottom left to top right. That's it. Don't get hung up on other supposed "mandates". Protect your capital and the direction of that equity line. "   I will leave you with one last series of quotes from Steve Clark's interview with Jack Schwager. ...

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4. ...