When will the Markets be Scared of Inflation?
Friday, February 18th, 2011The protesters win the war in Egypt, as the final battle comes to an end and Mubarak steps down. Markets continue to make fresh highs, and so are treasury yields. You can see traders already had this news priced in. The dollar continues to get whacked, and if there was any uncertainty the situation was systemic, this wouldn’t be the case.
Normally when uncertainty hits the market, the dollar gets a flight to safety bid, but the dollar has continued to weaken over the period. If traders were really fearful you would have seen the “risk-off” trade- money flows out of stocks and into bonds, the U.S. Dollar, and Gold. Instead traders were not fearful at all and decided to just sit on their hands. Regardless, the bigger story looms and Inflation is rearing its ugly head!
The Egyptians finally overthrow a dictator they had in place for 30 years, and all because food prices spiked. Will contagion spread to the nations around Egypt? Traders will be watching to see how this will play out. I believe this is a small battle in a much larger war!
In times of uncertainty gold acts as an inflation hedge. Since the Egyptian situation posed no immediate threat, we should have seen gold sell off, but defying all odds gold has continued higher on the news. It looks as if its going to make its way to new heights.
The week ahead. Equities are still due for a five to ten percent pullback, but as the bulls and bears both want the market to pull back the opposite tends to happen. One thing to note as crude got whacked on Monday as Gold stayed very strong. It might be catching a bid into the decision congress will make about raising the debt ceiling as well as European debt roll-over in March.
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