Today, with a 9 year delay, Bank of America has caught up with where we were at the start of the decade, and repeating virtually everything we have said - consistently each day for over 11 years - says that while "the size of major central bank balance sheets has been stable at 21 to 28% of GDP in the past decade just like the gold price" things are changing rapidly and "as central banks & governments double their balance sheets & fiscal deficits we up our 18m gold target from $2000 to $3000/oz." And while it's not all smooth sailing, with the bank warning that "a strong USD backdrop, falling equity market volatility, and weak jewelry demand in India & China may remain headwinds", it is now clear that even Wall Street's agenda is aligned with that of all those who have been calling that the biggest beneficiary of central bank lunacy will be the "barbarous relic", one which according to the most clueless person of the 21st century only had value because it was "tradition." And yet here we are, when one of the biggest US banks just said that gold is the "ultimate store of value."

Who to believe: a pathological liar (i.e., a central banker) or someone who finally sees the light?

Incidentally, the name of the BofA report was "The Fed can't print gold", which was a delightful flashback to what we said some nine years ago.

Gold prices have performed well in the recent period

As the ultimate store of value, gold prices have performed well during the past 15 months, posting a rally of over 10% since the Federal Reserve did a monetary policy U-turn in January 2019. Gold has also delivered a strong performance against other asset classes YTD. Of course, it has not been a straight line up, and gold did sell off hard for a brief period in March. The swing in gold prices mirrored the down and then up move in real interest rates. Now our CTA models suggest gold positioning is light, likely because of the spike in volatility and the mechanical drop in the gold Sharpe ratio. But this constraint could change as volatility keeps falling quickly across financial markets.