Gold Marks Its Worst Day in Over a Decade. What’s Behind the Slide

Dow Jones
Oct 22

With gold behaving more like a growth stock than a safe-haven asset, a bit of volatility was bound to hit at some point. It’s finally here—and the yellow metal posted its worst drop in more than a decade.

Gold continuous contract prices for October delivery fell 5.7%, or 248.70, to $4,087.70 per troy ounce on Tuesday, its largest one-day dollar decline on record and its largest one-day percentage decline since June 20, 2013, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The price is still up 55.5% year to date.

The most active gold price closed down 5.7% at $4,109.10, its lowest close since Oct. 10, in its largest one-day decline on record and its largest percentage decline since June 20, 2013. It was down as much as a 6.1% intraday, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

A stronger U.S. dollar and a wave of profit-taking weighed on prices, said Bas Kooijman, CEO of asset manager DHF Capital.

Other precious metals prices tumbled, too. Platinum and silver futures, both of which tend to be more volatile than gold, fell 6.9% and 7.2%, respectively.

The pullback is a jolt to investors after a historic bull run this year. While some strategists, like Société Générale’s Mike Haigh, have said the metal had plenty of room to climb, others have argued the rally was overdone.

“Gold has entered a zone of unsustainable advance,” wrote analysts at Renaissance Macro Research in a weekend note, adding that the bull run has made it more difficult to gauge when to take profits.

“Whenever the reversal strikes, traditional trend following techniques are likely to be too slow to react to preserve capital,” Renaissance wrote.

It’s unclear whether Tuesday’s drop constitutes the start of that “reversal.” Either way, investors may not be able to count on gold as a hedge against volatility anymore—at least in the foreseeable future.

Gold mining stocks are even more unpredictable. Newmont, one of the world’s largest gold miners, was the worst performer in theS&P 500 on Tuesday, falling 9%. That stumble follows a 4.5% gain on Monday, a 7.6% decline on Friday, and a 5% rise on Thursday.

Miners are traditionally stable, if not downright sleepy, stock picks. When looking at the last five years, Newmont has a beta—a measure of volatility relative to a benchmark—of 0.49, which essentially means it is half as volatile as the broader market. In the same span, Agnico Eagle Mines’ beta was 0.47, with Barrick Mining’s a tick higher at 0.51.

But the relentless rise of gold—and indeed, mining stocks—appears to have changed the calculus on Wall Street. Gold mining stocks are now reacting to the price of bullion the way crypto companies react to the price of Bitcoin. The VanEck Gold Miners exchange-traded fund was down 9.9% on Tuesday.

Silver prices add another variable to the increasingly complicated equation. Companies like Newmont, Agnico Eagle, and Coeur Mining also produce silver—and silver prices have climbed even faster than gold prices this year.

The combination of skyrocketing prices, newfound volatility, and diverging investor sentiment has put miners in unfamiliar territory. While their next moves will depend on underlying precious metal prices, it’s anyone’s guess how big those moves might be.

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