The market meaning of a gold breakout

Gold bulls became very excited when gold prices tested overhead resistance at the 2000–2100 level. In the past, such tests had been met with selling pressure, but technical analysts would interpret a definitive breakout at these levels as opening the door to significant upside.

Moreover, the bottom panel of the accompanying chart shows that the gold to S&P 500 ratio has been making a multi-year bottom, which argues for the start of a cycle that favours hard assets like gold and commodities over paper assets like stocks and bonds. Before you get too excited, such bottoms can take some time to develop and a hard asset bull market may not appear for several years.

In addition, the long-term bull case for commodities and hard assets is underscored by a regime of chronic underinvestment in capital expenditures in commodity extraction industries.

 I am no gold bug and I have no strong opinion on the direction for gold prices. I am more interested in the cross-asset implications of this gold rally. The full post can be found here.