On Mar 1, 2014, SPDR GLD was $123.61 USD. After a drop in Dec 2015 to $101, Dec 2016 to 109.61, Dec 2017 upwards to 123.65, plummeting Sept 2018 to $112.78 until now.
Feb 15, 2019 it closed at $124.80. However, that USD is worth much more now in CAD terms.
Kitco 5 year gold price
Mar 1, 2014, CADUSD=X conversion was $0.90, plummeting to $0.71 in Jan, 2016, and staying in a range of $0.73-$0.80. Currently at $1 CAD = $0.75 USD. A 21% decrease in value vs. USD since March 1, 2014.
Gold is $1749.60 / oz CAD as of Feb 15, 2019. $1,486.14 on Mar 3, 2014. Almost an 18% increase. So has it lost value or remained consistent due to the US exchange rate?
Is it still a good idea to use GLD in USD as a hedge against CAD losses and inflation? Seems so.
Canada is a commodity country. Looking at commodities over last 5 year term is a pretty sad state of affairs. S&P GSCI Energy TR is down -16.50%. Petroleum TR is similar at -16.03% Precious and Industrial Metals TR have had the least losses in this period, at -1.33% and -1.49% respectively. Commodities should come back to the mean over the next few years.
So where is the growth happening? Google comes through with a list of the
100 Highest Non-Leveraged 5 Year ETF Returns.
https://etfdb.com/compare/highest-5-year-returns/no-leveraged/
Semiconductors, Software, Medical Devices and Health Care, Tech, Tech, Cloud Computing and Internet have been the darlings of last 5 years. Perhaps the trend will change back to Energy, Commodities, and Metals?
Another post I had back in 2012 was about Greece Defaults. I was interested in the effects defaults have on the markets and how the banks and funds trade defaults. According to wikipedia, Greece defaulted again in 2015. Since 2014, Argenina, Ukraine, Venezuela, and recently Barbados defaulted. Compare this to the Great Depression and 1983 Latin American debt crisis, where many countries defaulted in a single year. The most significant defaults have been in recent years, with Greece, Ecuador, Argentina, and recently Venezuela.
The Greece hangover and 2009 global financial crisis will likely have repercussions and aftershocks for many years, since they were such dramatic events. The Database of Sovereign Defaults, 2017 paper seems to conclude the defaults on Sovereign debt since 1990 have dramatically decreased in proportion to the world public debt and GDP. With the exception of 2012 and 2013, total debt defaults have remained fairly consistent (and lower than previous years) since 2007.
Another trend in the news around 2011 was the downgrading of US Debt by S&P. A Canadian analyst made the news with an S&P downgrade, and was in this scathing report again last year about Canadian Bank risk. An interesting tidbit is that China didn't allow defaults before 2014, and S&P has entered the Chinese market this year, with Chinese defaults on the rise and in the news.
Seems like many books will be written about this period in history.
