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Investing Research Articles

299 Research Articles

DJIA-Gold Ratio as a Stock Market Indicator

A reader requested a test of the following hypothesis from the article “Gold’s Bluff – Is a 30 Percent Drop Next?” [no longer available]: “Ironically, gold is more than just a hedge against market turmoil. Gold is actually one of the most accurate indicators of the stock market’s long-term direction. The Dow Jones measured in gold is a… Keep Reading

Future of the Price of Gold

Will increases in central bank and investor holdings of gold drive its price higher? Or, is the price of gold in bubble territory, portending weak future returns? In the May 2013 update of their paper entitled “The Golden Dilemma”, Claude Erb and Campbell Harvey investigate how investors should treat gold in asset allocation. They consider a… Keep Reading

Gold vs. Gold Miners

How do gold and gold miner stocks interact? In his February 2014 presentation package entitled “A Golden Bet: Gold Miner Equities versus Gold”, Claude Erb examines the long-run relationship between gold and a gold miner stock indexes. He relies mostly on in-sample regressions over a 20-year sample period. Using monthly gold price and gold miner… Keep Reading

Explaining the Price of Gold

What factors truly explain movements in the price of gold? In his January 2014 paper entitled “Facts and Fantasies about Gold”, Joachim Klement checks the validity of common explanations for changes in gold price. Specifically, he investigates whether gold price responds to: change in inflation expectation; change in real interest rate; financial crises; changes in currency… Keep Reading

Gold as Hedge and Safe Haven

…gold is generally a hedge and safe haven for stocks in developed markets, but not in emerging markets.

Is Gold Overpriced?

Is the price of gold too high? In their May 2024 paper entitled “Is There Still a Golden Dilemma?”, Claude Erb and Campbell Harvey revisit their golden dilemma, the tug of war between dueling ideas: A high price for gold today presages low future return. The higher the price of gold today, the rosier its… Keep Reading

Real Gold Price and Future Gold Return

Does the real (inflation-adjusted) price of gold indicate future gold return? If so, what is the current indication? In their August 2020 paper entitled “Gold, the Golden Constant, COVID-19, ‘Massive Passives’ and Déjà Vu”, Claude Erb, Campbell Harvey and Tadas Viskanta examine behavior and implications of real gold price (gold price in U.S. dollars per… Keep Reading

Gold Price Drivers?

What drives the price of gold: inflation, interest rates, stock market behavior, public sentiment? To investigate, we relate monthly and annual spot gold return to changes in: Non-seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPI). Nominal and real short-term (ST) interest rates based on 3-month U.S. Treasury bill yield. S&P 500 Index return. University of Michigan (UM) Consumer… Keep Reading

Research on Gold as an Investment

What is the scope of research on gold as an investment? In their July 2015 paper entitled “The Financial Economics of Gold – A Survey”, Fergal O’Connor, Brian Lucey, Jonathan Batten and Dirk Baur review the body of formal research on gold from the perspective of an investor. They start with the following background topics: how gold markets operate; physical gold demand and… Keep Reading

Modeling and Forecasting the Price of Gold

Does modeling gold price relationships with other variables based on entire distributions differ from that based only on distribution means? In their May 2012 paper entitled “Is Gold Overpriced?”, Lingjie Ma and George Patterson apply a quantile regression model (considering effects across the distribution) to investigate long-run relationships between the price of gold and various economic… Keep Reading