Gold got hammered today:
What is interesting is that you’re going to start hearing people talk about marginal cost of extraction and about how that figure is a floor for commodity pricing.
It is not.
While marginal production cost is one component of commodity pricing, markets can go deeper below the cost of production because commodity markets measure instantaneous supply and demand. Eventually there will be some equalization but it does not have to be immediate – in fact, it can take a gut-wrenchingly long time to moderate to prices where costs are reflected.
I believe with the perception that gold is a safe haven from all the currency printing that is going on that there is a significant amount of the marketplace that is essentially going to be trapped in the commodity and the real question is going to be: when will this washout in-progress end? Markets usually trend longer and deeper than most people anticipate.
Most commodities (except for natural gas) are down across the board. If this trend continues, it will have a material impact on countries with commodity exposure – this includes Canada. As such, I am comfortable with my relatively large (2/3rds) US-denominated exposure. I also have no direct exposure to commodities.