Bank of America's chief investment strategist Hartnett suggests buying gold even as the price hits historic highs; The bank claims that a Fed rate cut could trigger new inflation, which would be bullish for gold.
Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America, recommends that investors should buy gold even as the price hovers near record highs.
Hartnett wrote in a recent report that investors should do "what central banks are doing" - buy gold.
The strategist explains that this is because the Fed's rate cuts in the coming months could lead to a rebound in inflation next year, and physical assets like gold have historically performed well during inflation periods.
Just after Hartnett made this statement, Fed Chairman Powell clearly signaled a dovish stance on Friday: the inflation rate is only half a percentage point higher than the Fed's 2% target, and the unemployment rate is rising, "The time for policy adjustments has come". These remarks reinforced expectations of the Fed's first rate cut at the meeting on September 17-18.
At the same time, precious metals prices are experiencing a record rebound. Gold prices have surged by about 20% so far this year, outperforming the S&P 500 index's 18.8% increase and also surpassing the performance of technology stocks.
Hartnett emphasizes that gold is the only asset outperforming US technology stocks.
The report points out that a confusing factor behind the rise in gold prices is that investors have not been consistently chasing gold. Instead, the gold market has seen a net outflow of $2.5 billion, indicating that investors have been taking profits as gold prices hit record highs.
At the same time, this also means that the buying pressure for gold comes from another group in the market.
Hanaitte's strong statement that the record high gold price coexists with the outflow of funds can only be explained by an unprecedented amount of central bank purchases.
Gold is now the second largest reserve asset (16.1% vs. 15.6% for the euro) and one of the assets with the lowest correlation to stocks among all asset classes, according to the report.
Finally, according to the above report, potential gold ETFs worth considering include$ISHARES GOLD TRUST MICRO (IAUM.US)$And.$Spdr Gold Minishares Trust (GLDM.US)$, Hanaitte calls it "top-notch".
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