Gold's second life

Gold stopped trading like a commodity somewhere in the last three years. The marginal buyer is no longer a jeweller or a speculator but a central bank diversifying away from reserves it has watched be frozen, and that buying does not care what the price is. The old rule, that gold falls when real yields rise, has been breaking for long enough that the exception needs its own explanation: the debasement trade, a bet less on inflation than on the willingness of governments to keep issuing. Watch the metal against the miners. Producers carry the same ounce with a cost base attached, so they move further in both directions, and the gap between the two is the cleanest read on whether this is a monetary trade or an equity one.