Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Stock Market Up 8 Out of First 9 months - 13th Dec 24
What Does a Strong Sept Mean for the Stock Market? - 13th Dec 24
Is Trump the Most Pro-Stock Market President Ever? - 13th Dec 24
Interest Rates, Unemployment and the SPX - 13th Dec 24
Fed Balance Sheet Continues To Decline - 13th Dec 24
Trump Stocks and Crypto Mania 2025 Incoming as Bitcoin Breaks Above $100k - 8th Dec 24
Gold Price Multiple Confirmations - Are You Ready? - 8th Dec 24
Gold Price Monster Upleg Lives - 8th Dec 24
Stock & Crypto Markets Going into December 2024 - 2nd Dec 24
US Presidential Election Year Stock Market Seasonal Trend - 29th Nov 24
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past - 29th Nov 24
Gold After Trump Wins - 29th Nov 24
The AI Stocks, Housing, Inflation and Bitcoin Crypto Mega-trends - 27th Nov 24
Gold Price Ahead of the Thanksgiving Weekend - 27th Nov 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast to June 2025 - 24th Nov 24
Stocks, Bitcoin and Crypto Markets Breaking Bad on Donald Trump Pump - 21st Nov 24
Gold Price To Re-Test $2,700 - 21st Nov 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks: This Is My Strong Warning To You - 21st Nov 24
Financial Crisis 2025 - This is Going to Shock People! - 21st Nov 24
Dubai Deluge - AI Tech Stocks Earnings Correction Opportunities - 18th Nov 24
Why President Trump Has NO Real Power - Deep State Military Industrial Complex - 8th Nov 24
Social Grant Increases and Serge Belamant Amid South Africa's New Political Landscape - 8th Nov 24
Is Forex Worth It? - 8th Nov 24
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Professor Niall Ferguson Says Don't Buy Gold, Wrong Again?

Commodities / Gold and Silver 2010 May 27, 2010 - 11:54 AM GMT

By: Adrian_Ash

Commodities

Phew! That was a close call from our tenured contrarian indicator...

YIKES! FOR ONE awful moment just then, I thought maybe the top was in.


"Gold has become the favored hedge against financial and monetary uncertainty," said Niall Ferguson, Harvard's financial history professor, on Monday.

"It's certainly a time-tested way of coping with really turbulent markets."

Oh cripes! Niall Ferguson – our tenured contrarian indicator – now says gold is a proven defense against investment stress. It's taken 11 years and 356% gains in gold, but he's finally got it.

That's the top. Sell!

Oh, hold on – "A lot of the upside is already there," Ferguson went on, live by video-link to the Wall Street Journal. "The time to buy was in 1999, not 2010..."

Phew! As you were, then, bloody-minded gold buyers. And as you relax, safe in the knowledge that Professor Wrong still says you shouldn't buy, let's remind ourselves just what it was he advised 11 years ago – back in 1999 – the "time to buy gold" as he now puts it...

"The twilight of gold appear[s] to have arrived. True, total blackout is still some way off...Gold has a future, of course.

"But mainly as jewelry."

Fast forward to late 2008 – some $445 higher per ounce for gold, slap-bang amid the post-Lehmans Crash crisis – and Professor Ferguson was at it again.

"I have been debating today whether gold bars really are the answer," Ferguson confessed to the New York Magazine when quizzed about his portfolio for a puff piece that November.

But "they probably aren't," he decided...thereby leaving another $470 per ounce on the table over the last 18 months.

Now he says 2010 is not the time to buy gold either. So, given what happened when he rejected the idea in mid-1999 and then in late 2008, expect another $400-or-so on the price before the Laurence A.Tisch Professor of History next weighs in with his forecast.

The man whose last TV-and-book blockbuster, The Ascent of Money, concluded that "the state-owned bank [was] now close to extinction"...just as the UK nationalized one-third of its finance sector, and the US Fed bought $2 trillion of failing bank assets...now advises that "There are other ways to protect yourself, and maybe somewhat smarter ways."

Missing the point entirely once more, Ferguson recommends – instead of gold – buying Norwegian and Swiss government debt for protection from the sovereign debt crisis.

Clang! Clang! Everybody out!

By Adrian Ash
BullionVault.com

Gold price chart, no delay | Free Report: 5 Myths of the Gold Market
Formerly City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London and a regular contributor to MoneyWeek magazine, Adrian Ash is the editor of Gold News and head of research at www.BullionVault.com , giving you direct access to investment gold, vaulted in Zurich , on $3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.

(c) BullionVault 2010

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in