The mystery of gold prices

Traders have an expression to describe how unpredictable financial markets can be: “better off dumb”. Stocks or other financial markets can sometimes behave in unforeseeable ways. Analysts predicted that American share prices would collapse if Donald Trump won the election in 2016—they soared. Companies that post better-than-expected earnings sometimes see their share prices decline. Glimpsing the future should give a trader an edge, and most of the time it would. But not always.Say you knew, at the start of 2021, that inflation was going to soar, the consequence of rampant money-printing by central banks and extravagant fiscal stimulus. In addition, perhaps you also knew that inflation would then be stoked by trench warfare in Europe. With such knowledge, there is perhaps one asset above all others that you would have dumped your life savings into: the precious metal that adorns the necks and wrists of the wealthy in countries where inflation is a perennial problem.