After a sluggish January for precious metals, gold and silver markets saw a rally during the first day of February trading, only to see it reverse here today on the 2nd day of the month, after a strong U.S. jobs report, to continue the lackluster performance we’ve seen in early 2024.

On Thursday, gold gained $15 to settle at $2,064 per ounce. As of this Friday recording, the monetary metal has given back all of Thursday’s gain and then some and currently checks in at $2,045 but is still up a slight 0.8% for the week.

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Sunday, January 07, 2024

Financial Markets 2024 Outlook / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2024

By: Michael_Pento

This year promises to be one of the most interesting years economically, politically, and market-wise in history. We have two significant global conflicts/wars ongoing, just as President Xi of China is reiterating his promise to annex Taiwan, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea threatens to wipe the US off the map. Meanwhile, we have the most likely Republican candidate getting thrown off state ballots under the disgusting guise of trying to preserve democracy. The US is sadly in the process of becoming a banana republic. Wars and revolutions are not a tail risk. They are happening now and are likely to metastasize in 2024.

With this backdrop, we have the most expensive stock market in history prior to 2020. The price-to-sales ratio is 2.62, and the total market cap of equities is 176% of GDP; both figures are near record highs and dwarf the historical averages prior to the pandemic. And the equity risk premium is zero. Meaning the earnings yield of stocks is less than that yield offered by simply owning a risk-free T-bill. In other words, investors are not getting compensated at all for the extra risk of owning stocks over bonds.

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