One political earthquake after the next. Former President Donald Trump gets shot. He breaks tradition and attends every evening of the well-executed Republican National Convention and begins his acceptance speech with his personal account of the assassination attempt.
President Biden drops out of the presidential race, and Vice President Kamala Harris essentially wraps up the Democratic nomination in two days without receiving one single vote for herself in the primary process. I have never seen anything like the past two weeks in my 40 years of political participation.
The most pressing issue of the election is, of course, inflation and the state of the economy. Americans remain frustrated with the higher costs for groceries, gasoline, electricity, cars and housing.
That may explain why the price of gold has shot past $2,400 per ounce—a new all-time high. Gold is often a hedge against inflation and geo-political concerns, both issues taking center stage at the moment.
One would think that with interest rate cuts ahead, the current gold rally over the last year would be running out of steam. Prices are up about 18%, and the current rally indicates there remains concern about the value of the dollar with the federal government still borrowing obscene amounts of money just to pay current year expenses—and with the Russian war in Ukraine, instability still prevalent in the Middle East and China threatening Taiwan, gold owners have little appetite to sell.
We have often stated that gold is not a particularly good long-term investment, and the current price is too rich for my blood, but there is nothing wrong with having 2% - 3% of your liquid savings and investments in gold coins or gold-based exchange traded funds. The future can be uncertain, so some hard precious metal might give you some comfort.
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