Down 9% over the past three months and lighter by $1.25 billion in assets this year, the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) has not been an exchange traded fund of beauty, but it cannot be said GLD and rival gold funds have been boring.
While it remains to be seen if some boredom will benefit GLD and friends, putting gold volatility into historical context could be a harbinger that volatility is about to wane in the bullion market.
“At the end of the 1980s period of price volatility, gold entered a two-decade long era of relatively subdued price movement. As the inflation panic eased, so did the price of gold. In 2011, the panic was the financial crisis. That, too, has been easing; with it again, the price of gold,” reports Lorcan Roche Kelly for Bloomberg.
As ETF Trends reported on Wednesday, seasonal factors could bring some upside for GLD this month. In August, gold has finished in positive for four of the past five years. Gold has also produced a 6% average return over the past five years. Additionally, miners also generated outsized returns during August after recovering from a July sell-off. [August Sector Ideas]
Gold futures and physically-backed ETFs have been pressure this year amid speculation the Federal Reserve is preparing to raise interest rates, which has pushed the dollar higher. Higher interest rates would diminish gold’s attractiveness since the precious metal does not pay interest like fixed-income assets.