The Panic Button Gets a Thump
So, what caused this sudden exodus? The culprit, as is often the case, was a phantom. Murmurings of a more "hawkish" individual potentially taking a top job at the Fed were all it took. Suddenly, the spectre of higher interest rates and a beefier dollar had traders dumping gold and silver faster than you can say "quantitative tightening".
To me, this reveals the beautifully simple, and sometimes frustrating, logic of the market. Gold, for all its historic lustre, doesn't pay you a dividend. It sits there, looking pretty, but it generates no income. When the interest you can earn on boring old cash or government bonds starts to look more appealing, these shiny, non-yielding lumps of metal naturally fall out of favour. It’s a story as old as the hills, yet it catches people by surprise every single time. The speed of the selloff was algorithmic, clinical, and completely devoid of nuance.