Now THIS was “Gold Suppression!”

I regularly call out the carnival barker types among the "Pied Pipers of the Gold Bug Echo Chamber" for putting out utter nonsense at times as they frantically fight over a shrinking audience of well-meaning but impressionable investors who appreciate gold's historical role.

One of the dopier story lines for some of these types is to constantly claim that gold's price is "suppressed."  While it is true that professional traders often "scalp" fractions off the gold price in both directions in borderline illegal manipulation (as they do in futures and other markets with EVERY OTHER asset class); this is a long way from the accusation gold bugs make of a concerted conspiracy to keep the gold price from rising.

Gold bugs' best friends

Indeed, when you consider that -- since the inauguration of the modern-day fiat currency and "free floating" exchange rates given to the world by the late President Nixon and his Fed Chairman Arthur Burns -- gold has been the leading major asset class, this whole "suppression" thing sounds sillier.

BUT there was a time way back in 1999 where Yours truly saw front and center what WAS a desperate (and ultimately successful, for a while) intervention in the gold market to suppress the price.  To this day, the trades I recommended to our Members around this event remain THE most spectacular and profitable short-term calls I've ever made.

More so, the events surrounding this surprise move up -- and then slam back down--for gold were not only incredibly interesting, but set the table for the great bull market in the yellow metal that followed. And whereas the Fed and others in late 1999 were in full-fledged panic when gold spiked to well over $300/ounce for a while, later on it was none other than then-Chairman Alan Greenspan himself that cheered the unfolding bull market in gold!

 

From the archives:  The Great Gold Caper of 1999 (Click the link below for the first several pages of my October, 1999 issue.)

99 Oct newsletter