Gold is back –  and it has a message for us

IT’S easy to mock gold bugs, but their moment may finally have come. The precious metal has been breaking out recently amid higher-than-expected inflation in the US, and general anxiety over everything from geopolitics to the November presidential elections to where monetary policy and markets go from here.

All these things are predictable reasons for gold to surge. But there are deeper, longer-term messages in this rise that investors should pay very close attention to.

Let’s start with inflation. Whatever happens over the next few quarters, I’ve long thought that we were in for a period of “higher-for-longer” inflation. Aside from the possibility of a technology-driven productivity miracle, it’s hard to think of a macro-trend at the moment that isn’t inflationary.