It was probably a mix of both, but the point is moot…because gold seems to be fulfilling that prediction.
Let’s recap what’s been going on.
Gold sold off early last Wednesday on positive ADP job numbers, and then actually gained some ground after the Fed policy statement was released announcing the beginning of the end for the latest round of quantitative easing.
Then came the fireworks.
The next day’s trading in gold and silver fully revealed the effect we’d been predicting and hoping for: Gold leaped $22.50 (1.27%) to close at $1,791.80. It was such a torrid move that even silver couldn’t keep up, as it rose “only” $0.27 (1.15%) to $23.76.
So why would the Fed’s announcement of QE tapering send gold higher?
My theory is that these tightening events release some of the shorting pressure on the metals. And now that we’ve seen what happened the last time the Fed actually tightened, investors look at these events as potential launching pads for the metals.
Consider that the Fed’s first post-2008 rate hike, in December 2015, marked the very bottom of the gold bear market. It’s been a halting ascent out of a rounding bottom since then, but there’s no doubt that the bear market ended almost exactly then.