Gold futures for June delivery closed down 2.92% on the Comex today. The metal closed at $2343.40 an ounce. The drop came on a lessening of fears that the exchange of attacks between Israel and Iran would quickly lead to a wider Middle East war. And on growing sentiment that the Federal Reserve isn’t likely to cut interest rates soon. The drop in the gold contract for June delivery was the largest since February 3, 2023 when it fell 2.8%.
Here are the first 8 picks for my GREATER Growth Stocks Special Report. More on the way.
Gold (for February 2024 delivery) was trading at $2087 an ounce on New York Comex today, December 1. That easily beats the old record high of $2051.50 an ounce back in August 2020. The shiny metal is up 12% from $1830 an ounce in early October. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), which holds gold, is up 2.53% in the last month as of November 30. History, and the price action on the Gold Shares ETF, tells us that at this point in a strong gold rally, it doesn’t pay to chase gold itself, but it does pay to buy shares of gold miners.
Yesterday, Thursday, November 2, Barrick Gold (GOLD) reported earnings of 24 cents a share for the company’s this quarter. That was ahead of the 21 cents a share consensus estimate among Wall Street analysts. In the third quarter of quarter of 2022, the company reported earnings of 13 cents a share. The surprise was the fourth for Barrack in the last four quarters. But to me other news overshadowed the earnings themselves.
So what do you do with your portfolio for the rest of 2023? And what’s your best strategy to be prepared for 2024? In Part 1 of this Special Report I laid out the 10 developments that I thought would drive the financial markets for the rest of 223 and into 2024. Today, in Part 2, I’m going to give you the first 2 of 10 moves to take–with as much detail and as many specifics as possible–that you should be making now to position your portfolio for the uncertainties of the last quarter of 2023.
10 Picks for the Coming Recession. This one is especially difficult. Not only do I face the usual crystal-ball problem that comes up whenever you try to pick an investment for the future–what’s the macro and micro world going to look like in 6 months or a year from now–but I’ve got two big Recession-specific challenges. First, is there actually going to be a Recession in 2023? All the signs, in my opinion, point toward a recession in the second and third quarters, but it’s by no means guaranteed that we’ll have the two quarters of negative GDP growth that’s required by the minimal definition of a recession. And what’s the point, you might well ask, of making picks for a coming recession that never arrives? And, second, how bad will this recession be?
I will add this post to the end of my post of the entire Special Report today. I’m also posting it here, however, as a stand-alone so you will get notice in your email box that Move #4 has gone up. Here’s what I posted for Move #4.
Gold for June delivery closed at 2039.00 an ounce on the Comex today. That’s not too far away from the all-time record high of $2,070 an ounce. The move above $2,000 an ounce and any breach of the record at $2070 could trigger a rally as traders short gold buy to cover positions. That could well be true, but I’d note that this forecast of a gold rally is coming from traders long gold who are trying to talk a rally into being.
With the Federal Reserve seemingly winding down its cycle of interest rate increases, a stronger dollar is no longer the big currency market story. Gold is. Gold is back. And for at least the next 3 to 6 months.
The advice is sound, very sound. Move part (at least of your portfolio to cash and sit out the worst of this bear market on the sidelines. And since you have that cash in hand, you’ll be ready to snap up bargains when the market has put in a bottom (or near the bottom, or on the way up from the bottom…or something.) But right now that’s easier said than done.
U.S. GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter, gaining just 1% from the third quarter. For the full year the U.S. economy contracted by 3.5%. That makes 2020 the first time that the economy has contracted for a full year since 2009 and the Great Recession. At the bottom of that recession that economy contracted by 2.5%. 2020 is also the worst year for economic growth since 1946 when the economy shrank by 11.6% as the country demobilized after World War II. Consumer spending slowed in all 15 categories tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The sectors that had powered the recovery in the third quarter–restaurants and hotels, for instance–reversed. The growth in spending on cars and health car also slowed from the acceleration in the third quarter. So why is this good news as far as the stock market is concerned?
