When Gold Goes Up, Is It Really Gold, or Just the Dollar Going Down?
When gold jumps, a lot of people instantly start talking like the metal itself just had a spiritual awakening. Suddenly gold is “surging,” “sending a signal,” or “proving” something deep about the future. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes gold really is being bid up for gold-specific reasons. But sometimes nothing dramatic happened to gold at all. The dollar just got worse. That distinction is the whole point of this piece, and a lot of otherwise smart people still miss it. They see a higher gold price and assume gold got stronger. Quite often the uglier, simpler explanation is that the measuring stick got weaker. ...