SilverApe

This question gets asked a lot.  
The hallmark of the forum is a kindness and politeness where people ask a question forum members respond with help rather than sarcastic and unhelpful comments.  
I for one am always happy to answer this question and others! 

Stocks broadly tend to see prices rise over time that negate inflation, and also pay dividends.
Own a home and again price rises might broadly negate inflation and avoids having to find/pay rent, has imputed rent benefit
Gold (and cash deposits/bonds) broadly might be expected to just see price rises that broadly negate inflation
But all in a volatile manner, you can select two points in time to make a asset look extremely great, or lousy, according to whichever picture you might want to paint.

When you rebalance, such as yearly rebalancing back to thirds house/stock/gold weightings, that is a form of add-low/reduce-high trading that in itself tends to yield a 'dividend'. Attribute those 'trading' gains to gold, as though gold also paid a dividend and stock/home/gold can compare to all-stock total returns, but tending to do so in a less volatile manner. Three assets (land/stock/commodity), three sources of income (imputed rent, dividends, withdrawals (SWR)). Similar total return reward expectancy to all-stock but with less volatility = better risk-adjusted reward (higher Sharpe Ratio).
It's not easy to rebalance your home value, other than maybe at seven-year-itch type intervals, however the interval between rebalancing isn't a critical factor, more a case of being appropriate when more extreme deviations have occurred. Non rebalanced has the tendency to see the portfolio averaging higher average weighting in the asset(s) that performed the best, low weighting in the asset(s) that performed poorly. 33.3/33.3/33.3 initial stock/home/gold weightings might drift to being 50/40/10 in the best/mid/worst assets, time averaged 42/37/21 weightings, and yielded a similar overall total return reward to had you rebalanced back to 33.3/33.3/33.3 weightings each and every year.
Note the inverse correlation between stocks and gold. Across periods when stocks did poorly gold did well and vice versa. Having one or more assets that do well more consistently is important, otherwise if you're totally in say just stocks that endure a decade long period of low/no real gains, maybe even a loss, then if you're also drawing a income from that such as a 4% SWR then that eats into your base capital, erodes the portfolio value, potentially to a low point that is too low to recover from.

Regarding prices, we could be in a period of stagflation where some goods rise, others fall, and some remain unchanged. I think that's where we are now. Airline flights, cruises, restaurants prices, and cars are all cheap, but then food and alcohol is on the rise. 
 
 
 

Regarding prices, we could be in a period of stagflation where some goods rise, others fall, and some remain unchanged. I think that's where we are now. Airline flights, cruises, restaurants prices, and cars are all cheap, but then food and alcohol is on the rise. 
 
 
 

I'll have a stab at this. It comes down to a liquidity crisis. In every market there are stratas of investors; institutional, retail, hedge funds and many others. In the event of a sharp loss in the stock market or somewhere else, gold holdings might be sold off to cover those losses, or previously held longs/shorts would be unwound. This was obsevered during the 07/08 crisis when the price fell as there was a run for cash (or cash equivalents), which means the gold price fell as there were fewer bids up. 
Personally, I can't see a fall in price as we are technicallly already in a deflationary period as seen by the central banks' worry to keep pumping money to get the inflation target of 2% realised. Money suppy, M2, M3 has expanded enormously, and gold's ability to keep accounting for this, if not magical in some sense, is really telling of what is to come. I think there is going to be a delay of around 3-4 years before we see an unrelenting uptrend as either the pumped money sees a reckoning as currency value is massively devalued.
Attached image shows how gold, through the market, seems to be able to price monetary expansion.
But then, this interview from some years ago highlights how it could simulataneously over-valued.
https://m.investing.com/analysis/paul-van-eeden-on-why-gold-is-overvalued-145483
The chart in the link shows how gold has over-run the M2, M3 supply, but in fairness, the pumping today as caught up with gold value. From my point of view, it's another leg upwards.
 
 

I went back to the Mish blog where he discussed the topic of How are Gold and Money Supply Related? Incidentally, the same 'commercials net short contracts' chart often posted in this thread makes an appearance in the comments section there as well. Anyhow, on that comment section I found this comment to be somewhat enlightening regarding the COT charts (at the end):
I spent a long time in gold industry and what i observed are the following re gold price drivers
gold was not priced as 'money' in the 90s because of positive real debt/gdp ratios and screamingly good productivity - so its price reflected only marginal commodity demand. the price was primarily set by the world's largest god miners and their hedging prices the rise from 2002-2011 was a compounding of 3 trends reflation of gold as 'money' as US debt started to rise fall in USD relative to major currency baskets as always happens from birth of each new economic cycle - which also reignites inflation then the hard depreciation of USD post GFC where USD found an artificial new trough low in 2011 + rising debt drove increased 'gold as money buying' So you have to think of gold price as having 3 main drivers:
rate of change of intrinsic USD purchasing power (ie speed with which fiat is perceived to be losing value. thats a net of gdp minus inflation rate minus M2 change)
USD relative to other currency baskets (ie extrinsic)
commodity demand - the 3rd and least of the forces - which is why nearly all broking analyst forecasts on gold price are incorrect - because they generally focus almost exclusively on net supply/demand and marginal price of production theory. Which is just intellectual gibberish.
By using this I was able to anticipate the heavy drawdown in US gold price from 2011 to 2015 - tripled my money in the bear rally in 2016 - and now building a big position for the next move back to 1900+USD.
Mathematically I dont think there's any coincidence that is was 4 years and 4 months from Sept 2011 peak to Dec/Jan 2015/16 low and its now been 4yrs 4 months to end of May 2020.
That is purely a reflection of the USD cycle.
A note also re COT. If you go back and have a look at the 2015/16 bear really - you'll see COT was completely misleading - only specs were long initially.
COT is only a good indicator on trends. It is a contrarian indicator on inflections either in direction or sharp changes in price velocity - because producers are always looking for 'one step down' and specs 'one step up'.
 

Statistically though, gold's seasonality (2001 - present) would indicate sideways movement until August 😎
 

That's hilarious. What is the lady doing? Is that like tea leaf reading but with asparagus? I didn't even know that was a thing.

My proof sovereign collection 1979 to 2018

The Sigma Precious metal verifier is currently listed at $625.00 with the pro version costing more. That's quite an investment for the home buyer. 

Hi,
This is not an entry (as I published this elsewhere), but I had written about recent gold shortages on my little blog and how China is accumulating and the UK had sold off most of its stockpile. 

Hi,
This is not an entry (as I published this elsewhere), but I had written about recent gold shortages on my little blog and how China is accumulating and the UK had sold off most of its stockpile.