Gold is a regarded as a hedge against market turbulence by Bank of America who, in a note to clients, advised holding gold and paper currency at this time.
Bloomberg report that Bank of America Merrill Lynch describe the markets as being in a “Twilight Zone” – the zone between the end of QE and the Fed beginning to raise rates to try to bring normality back into the markets.
The note highlights two problems with raising rates which are prolonging this sojourn in the Twilight Zone. The first is that the real economy in the U.S. is not currently strong enough to withstand a rise in interest rates.
The second is that raising rates could cause a shock to the markets and the economy as the practically free money juicing the markets comes at a more realistic cost and some government, corporate and household debts become unserviceable.
For these reasons, Bank of America believe that the Fed is far from taking action to return the markets to normality and “the investment backdrop will likely continue to be cursed by mediocre returns, volatile trading rotation, correlation breakdowns and flash crashes.”
To deal with this they advocate (continue reading)