Annus horribilis leaves gold investors wealthier

My best wishes for 2021, a year when the situation only can improve.

As 2020 started there was no indication yet that the corona virus having surged in a Chinese city would turn into a world pandemic. After all there had been several similar outbreaks that never spread over a wide area. Since "this time it's different" is the most often heard false prayer, early warnings were met with disbelief. It would take till late February until it became obvious that northern Italy suffered a new outbreak with the nearby ski resorts turning into a vector for contagion for most of Europe. International tourism was to propagate the virus worldwide from March onward.

The impact on stock markets was almost instantaneous. From a pre-Covid top, stock market made their most rapid plunge in history, dragging precious metals in succession of forced sales, with silver impacted most. Central Banks opened the liquidity spigots to stave off the general collapse, while governments worked out relief plans to compensate for forced business closure and turnover loss due to the lock-downs.

The combined deficit spending and suppression of interest rates proved sufficient: general stock markets started recovering, despite the dramatic economic contraction and precious metals recovered, dragging the miners from their swamp. During summer, most often a dull period with little trading, the many investors staying home continued fueling the precious metal rally, expecting an inflationary wave because of the twin deficit. Gold broke above its 2011 previous all time high early August, surging to $2075 before correcting.

The autumn correction, days after the Biden electoral victory was inspired by the success of the newly developed Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine, followed by others within a few weeks. However Gold barely dipped a few days below $1800/Oz, bottoming at $1775 by end November. By now it is clear that this horrible year 2020 (with the death rate more than doubling at local pandemic peaks) would leave surviving gold investors wealthier than ever.

Let's finally illustrate this with a few graphs:

Gold (Nymex close) over 2020 (till Dec 30)

Gold mining investors can also look back on a most fruitful 2020:

HUI gold miners index (basket of unhedged gold miners quoting on US markets)

Refreshes of the GoldMinerPulse page and the Miners' performance comparison with Jan 15 data are now on-line.