The Barbarous Relic

[Spooky]

1 minute ago, Jaygo said:

 

I'm not so sure of this. You dont see it talked about too much anywhere outside of finance nerds like us, my personal proxy is BNN, Canada's news network doesn't even have it's price listed on the top ticker bar even though gold is one of Canadas largest exports. 

 

Maybe we settle into a comfy range in the 3000-4000 zone but that is absolutely gangbusters for the miners. With fuel prices steady many producers are 5-6 quarters into a bonanza. The longer we stay here the more cashed up they will be and then the M&A will start. Then you will start to see the rush to the juniors by generalists. That's the time for caution imo, not quite yet. 

 

 

 

Maybe it is just my circle of friends but they are obsessed with gold / miners. Everyday they are messaging about gold reaching a new high! Hyperinflation is around the corner they say.... 

[Blugolds]

5 minutes ago, Spooky said:

 

Maybe it is just my circle of friends but they are obsessed with gold / miners. Everyday they are messaging about gold reaching a new high! Hyperinflation is around the corner they say.... 

 

Same, but in my experience the same guys are the ones who were also talking about the meme stocks, day trading penny stocks on an Ap, and if you asked them to give you the ballpark annual return for gold over the last 20-30 years…they couldnt tell you, even if you gave them a +/- % handicap. 

 

This doesn’t even take into consideration that they are buying spot + and selling spot - and how that changes returns etc. 

 

And those are the guys buying physical, some are buying miners (no DD whatsoever just pick something that they heard the name of) and one guy GOLD.

 

Otherwise they’re just watching the spot every day

 

Fear and FOMO creates buzz (not unlike the meme stocks, there have always been gold bugs, but it’s almost like lately Gold has become the latest meme stocks). Gold is too crowded, que the silver guys “silver actually has MORE utility” they say.. “so I’ve been buying some silver”. It’s like the guys who couldnt afford BTC or thought it was over so they were looking for the next shitcoin or 2nd class crypto…thats silver. 

 

Like you said, could just be my circle, but the things Im hearing from coworkers and cohorts are very similar and correlates to the last “hot stock tip” they had. They also think the Fed is the problem and Powell is an idiot for not lowering rates, but couldnt tell you what their dual mandate is

[Kupotea]

1 hour ago, Spooky said:

Gold looking like a crowded trade. From a recent Bank of America fund manager survey:

 

Look at the actual flows. Central banks are accumulating but certainly not institutional investors in any meaningful sense. Negative outflows for the GDX over the last several months…

 

You could rephrase this chart to what fund managers don’t own and are pissed about missing.

 

Having said all that i absolutely think you get a correction in gold/gold miners before the end of the year. Good chance gold touches $4000 first. 

[Jaygo]

2 hours ago, Spooky said:

 

Maybe it is just my circle of friends but they are obsessed with gold / miners. Everyday they are messaging about gold reaching a new high! Hyperinflation is around the corner they say.... 

 

2 hours ago, Blugolds said:

 

Same, but in my experience the same guys are the ones who were also talking about the meme stocks, day trading penny stocks on an Ap, and if you asked them to give you the ballpark annual return for gold over the last 20-30 years…they couldnt tell you, even if you gave them a +/- % handicap. 

 

This doesn’t even take into consideration that they are buying spot + and selling spot - and how that changes returns etc. 

 

And those are the guys buying physical, some are buying miners (no DD whatsoever just pick something that they heard the name of) and one guy GOLD.

 

Otherwise they’re just watching the spot every day

 

Fear and FOMO creates buzz (not unlike the meme stocks, there have always been gold bugs, but it’s almost like lately Gold has become the latest meme stocks). Gold is too crowded, que the silver guys “silver actually has MORE utility” they say.. “so I’ve been buying some silver”. It’s like the guys who couldnt afford BTC or thought it was over so they were looking for the next shitcoin or 2nd class crypto…thats silver. 

 

Like you said, could just be my circle, but the things Im hearing from coworkers and cohorts are very similar and correlates to the last “hot stock tip” they had. They also think the Fed is the problem and Powell is an idiot for not lowering rates, but couldnt tell you what their dual mandate is

 

Wow, that's surprising. Maybe you guys just run with a bunch of degenerate gamblers, no insult intended. I really havent had any of my usual "marks" mention it yet. I look for my best friends dad who is always talking eth, uranium, airlines etc then my buddy rob who was obsessed with Amc and GameStop. 

 

 

[james22]

2 hours ago, Blugolds said:

. . . if you asked them to give you the ballpark annual return for gold over the last 20-30 years…they couldnt tell you, even if you gave them a +/- % handicap. 

 

How many here know gold has beat the S&P500 the last 25 years?

[TwoCitiesCapital]

5 minutes ago, james22 said:

 

How many here know gold has beat the S&P500 the last 25 years?

 

 

At least in price return. Haven't done the math to know if it still holds true after dividends and reinvestment, but price return has been true for a bit. 

 

The fact the S&P dropped so much in 2022 while gold was flat to up was a good catch-up for it and shows it's diversification benefits in achieving similar returns through a very different path. 

[nsx5200]

That's a bit disingenuous to pick a particular time range that just happens to favor gold.  Why not let people decide for themselves: https://www.macrotrends.net/2608/gold-price-vs-stock-market-100-year-chart

 

Play around with the time range, and see the two horses take turn in the lead.

[Spooky]

2 hours ago, Jaygo said:

Maybe you guys just run with a bunch of degenerate gamblers

 

Definitely true!

[TwoCitiesCapital]

1 hour ago, nsx5200 said:

That's a bit disingenuous to pick a particular time range that just happens to favor gold.  Why not let people decide for themselves: https://www.macrotrends.net/2608/gold-price-vs-stock-market-100-year-chart

 

Play around with the time range, and see the two horses take turn in the lead.

 

Sure. Gold outperforms equities for the last 20-25 years and equities outperformed gold the 20-25 years before then. 

 

I think the point isn't to suggest gold is necessarily superior, but that it has the ability to outperform over exceptionally long periods of time - particularly when equities are purchased at excessive valuations while gold was left to languish (a la 2000 and again in the early 2020s).  

 

In a value investor forum where people regularly lambast investments without cash flow as "speculation" and "bubbles" - I think it's a particularly important insight. 

Edited September 10, 2025 by TwoCitiesCapital

[Marco Van Basten]

4 hours ago, james22 said:

 

How many here know gold has beat the S&P500 the last 25 years?

2000 was a multi-year low, down 60% from peak in 1979 for gold, and S&P was an all time high.  

[thowed]

  Yes, context is everything and obviously 2000 was a pretty unusual time for US equities.

 

But it is still a very interesting statistic as said above - it's a long period, and you'd expect Gold to act more like cash or bonds

[nsx5200]

Shifting the arguments a bit from Gold to rare violin:

https://www.beares.com/the-beares-stradivari-price-index/

"Stradivari violins have consistently proven to be safe, stable and excellent investments combining the high returns achievable in equity markets with the stability and low risk offered by long-dated US Government debt."

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/when-a-violin-will-net-you-millions-of-dollars/article16798490/

"A 2013 study by Brandeis University economists Kathryn Graddy and Philip Margolis found that from 2007 through 2012, rare violins outperformed fine art and the S&P 500 index."

 

No real numbers provided by the links but I suspect somebody will go off and claim that the hundreds of years of advancement is for naught, and we should all have been making and hoarding violins to beat inflation.  I think it becomes, rather quickly, the absurdities of some arguments.

[TwoCitiesCapital]

2 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Shifting the arguments a bit from Gold to rare violin:

https://www.beares.com/the-beares-stradivari-price-index/

"Stradivari violins have consistently proven to be safe, stable and excellent investments combining the high returns achievable in equity markets with the stability and low risk offered by long-dated US Government debt."

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/when-a-violin-will-net-you-millions-of-dollars/article16798490/

"A 2013 study by Brandeis University economists Kathryn Graddy and Philip Margolis found that from 2007 through 2012, rare violins outperformed fine art and the S&P 500 index."

 

No real numbers provided by the links but I suspect somebody will go off and claim that the hundreds of years of advancement is for naught, and we should all have been making and hoarding violins to beat inflation.  I think it becomes, rather quickly, the absurdities of some arguments.

 

No, that's exactly the opposite point. Making more violins would be a BAD thing for the price. 

 

It's is precisely scarcity that allows it to continue to appreciate at a clip better than inflation. As long as the population/monetary growth exceeds that of something of value that is scarce, that something of value will appreciate more quickly than inflation. 

 

It's true of rare/collectible cars (where every special edition Ferrari ever released has outperformed the S&P 500 from that time forward), to rare whiskeys/wines, certain real estate, Bitcoin, rare violins, etc. 

 

Something that is both desirable AND rare is the winning combination. 

Edited September 11, 2025 by TwoCitiesCapital

[nsx5200]

[s] Yes, society in the long term will definitely be better if everybody hoard something desirable and rare instead of figuring out how to to add more capabilities.

 

I heard that dinosaur bones are in that category, we should go get the engineers to quit their jobs and start digging. [/s]

 

Yes, by changing "we should all have been making and hoarding violins to beat inflation" to "we should all have hoarding violins to beat inflation" makes more sense, but it still means you're still missing the bigger picture.