GMO Emerging Thoughts: Present and Emerging Risks to the Gold Trade - By Amit Bhartia and Matt Seto

The notion of gold as a hedge against systemic risks is flawed. We believe that the concept of gold’s role as an insurance policy needs to be narrowed significantly.

Last year we argued that relying on conventional wisdom to analyze gold price movements is naive. Conventional wisdom would lead us to believe that gold price movements are driven solely by the actions of developed markets’ central banks. We believe this view is misinformed and that the available data does not support it.

In that paper, we argued instead that the key driver of the significant rise in gold prices since 2000 has been the emerging markets consumer. Between 2000 and 2010, consumers in emerging markets accounted for 79% of total demand. Conversely, ETF purchases accounted for only 7.5% of demand and central banks in aggregate were net sellers.

This expanded framework demonstrates that gold is also positively exposed to pro-cyclical factors in the emerging markets. Moreover, given the cyclical challenges gold’s key consumers may be facing, the value of gold as insurance should be questioned.

Over the past 13 years, the impact of emerging markets on gold prices was unequivocally positive: emerging markets drove gold prices higher. However, this has not always been the case through history and, we believe, will not always be the case going forward. Emerging markets can be both a positive and a negative driver.