gold
Pierre Lassonde Pt. 2: Gold Could Hit $20,000 An Ounce
Yesterday we had the first part of a recent interview by Kitco News with Pierre Lassonde, who retired as chairman of the board at Franco-Nevada earlier this year.
In today’s article, we highlight Lassonde’s comments on gold and why he thinks the Dow/gold ratio could hit 1:1 parity.
Lassonde says that retail interest in the gold market is evident by the record inflow into the GLD gold ETF this year, which has already set a record.
“If you look at gold itself, just look at the gold ETF. Look at GLD. GLD is up over 900 tons this year alone. They’ve had more inflow of money in the first 9 months of this year than any year in the past 16 years. It’s been public since 2004. It’s a record inflow of money into GLD and that’s also a precursor to what’s happening in the equity sector.”
He also says that gold prices will move higher should Democratic nominee Joe Biden win the November election. Lassonde says all the money that will be printed to finance all the new spending.
“If Biden gets in and they decide to do the kind of medicine we have in Canada, the costs are just going to blow out, they are going to have to print more money, all of that is going to fuel the gold price up.”
How high the price will rise is anyone’s guess, but Lassonde says he expects that at some time in the next 5-10 years, we will see the Dow/gold ratio to reach parity at 1:1.
When asked if that means gold will climb or the Dow will fall, Lassonde says he expects a combination of the two, but mostly a slight Dow correction with a massive increase in gold prices.
“It’s hard to see the Dow going down to 10,000 or 12,000. Could it happen? Yes, but I find it very difficult. Could it go down to 20,000? Very possibly. 17,000? Yes, 15,000? Could the gold price go up to $15,000? Absolutely. That’s what I’m talking about, but I don’t think it’s tomorrow morning. I think it’s sometime in the next 5 to possibly as long as 10 years.”
Lassonde says there have been two instances of the Dow/gold ratio reaching 1:1, and both times it occurred for different reasons. This time, he thinks we get to 1:1 due to all the money printing by the Federal Reserve.
“It’s instructive to look at the past. Because twice when it’s happened, it’s happened for very different reasons. Back in 1933, the Dow lost 90% of its value between 1929 and 1933. It went from 360 to 37. The gold price went from $20 to $36. So the gold price almost doubled but the Dow itself went down 90%. In 1980, the Dow had gone down from essentially 1000 to 600 from 1966 to 1980, it came back up to 800, but the gold price as we all know, went from $35 to $800, which is 24x from the beginning. So very, very different responses to different times.”
“The ratio has been 1:1 twice in the past. It takes a 40-50 year period if you look at 1930, 1980, well we are now at 2020, so 40 years, so sometime in the next 5, 10 years I think we are going to see 1:1. But I didn’t know how we were going to get there. With COVID, I think we’ve seen the answer in a sense that if you look at our neighbor to the south, the Federal Reserve, they are printing $3 trillion, they are talking about another package in the $1 trillion to $2 trillion.”
Lassonde does caution that if we see 1:1 parity, we shouldn’t expect $15,000 or $20,000 an ounce gold to stick around for very long. He said based on history it might only be a day or two, or a few weeks at most.
“The key question here is how long is it going to be there? Don’t forget in 1980 the gold price was $800 for less than a day. If you look at the entire quarter the gold price was $675 and if you average out for the year it was less than $600. So yes, it did go to $800, but it was there literally for a day. In 1933 though it went on a little longer than that but it was certainly less than a year, I think it was probably closer to three months or something like that. So the key question is how long will that ratio be 1:1. How long are we going to see the gold price at these crazy numbers. And then what will be the inflation? What’s the dollar going to be worth? I don’t know.”
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