Last Thursday, the Dow Jones fell 724 points. It followed up with a 424 point decline on Friday. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq fell 2.43% Friday.
Most analysts blamed the plunge on fear of an all-out trade war between the US and China. But the Federal Reserve rate hike on Wednesday also likely played a part in the stock market decline. The markets don't like the prospect of having their easy-money punch bowl taken away.
So, could we be on the verge of a gold breakout as stocks break down?
In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said he believes we are already in a bear market. Technically, analysts don't start talking bears until the stock market declines 20%. But as Peter pointed out, you have to drop 10% before you get to 20.
So, if this is a bear market, if we ultimately go down by more than 20%, then this is the bear market right now. It's only a correction if it doesn't turn into a bear market. But if it becomes a bear market, it's been a bear market the entire time, and I think we are in a bear market now."
The mainstream analysts continue to assure us that everything is fine. The fundamentals haven't change. Peter said in a sense, they're right.
The fundamentals haven't changed. They were lousy when the market was going up, and they're lousy now that the market is going down. In fact, if they've changed, the fundamentals have actually gotten worse. But the problem is these guys don't understand the fundamentals. They didn't realize that the only thing that was propping up the market was the fact that is was a bubble and what's changed is the bubble has been pricked."
Gold prices rallied after the Fed announced its rate hike. The price approached $1350 on Friday. The trade war talked spurred safe-haven buying, and we got the post-rate hike bounce we've seen in the past as investors sell the rumor, buy the fact of rate hikes.
Before the FOMC meeting, Peter said if the Fed didn't raise rates, gold could go ballistic.
But they did raise rates, so it just went up a little bit. We're at resistance of $1350. But we could explode at any minute."
Of course, nobody assumes the price of gold is going to break out.
Everybody assumes there is nothing to worry about. Everything is fine. The economy is great. There's no inflation. The Fed is going to keep raising rates. So, why would anybody want to buy gold? So, nobody believes it is going to break out."
Peter said that when gold finally does break out - and it will - it could go up at an astronomical pace.
Remember when the price of gold collapsed? This was back in 2012, late 2012, early 2013, I think we had a couple of days when gold was down like 200 bucks a day. I mean, the bottom just dropped out of the market. Well, I think the same thing is going to happen in reverse on the way up. I mean, you don't think gold can go up 200 bucks in a day? It can."
Peter says once gold gets above $1,400, there is really nothing to stop it from going to $1,500 or $1,600. There won't be a lot of sellers at those prices, but there will be plenty of buyers. Momentum buyers will come into the market.
Once gold breaks out, nobody is prepared for it."
Reprinted with permission from SchiffGold.com.