Laurent Maurel

Each passing week now brings a new figure on inflation which shows us that the price rise movement initiated this fall is becoming increasingly out of control.

Insiders are selling and the number of new margin accounts is skyrocketing, at a time when the markets have never been so expensive and fragile. Fear is well and truly present here...but so too is confidence. And it is this confidence that is dominating the sentiment of the markets. The central b...

The next stage of the inflationary cycle that we are currently traversing will involve efforts to control the prices by the authorities, which will logically trigger even more pronounced shortages in a production chain that is already greatly weakened by the sanitary crisis and by the rise in tra...

These interventions on the futures markets now only have very transitory effects, and at the same time, they are reinforcing the tensions on the physical side. Each enforced correction on the paper market prompts a veritable run on the physical metal. This holds true for the entire metals compart...

The Fed, for its part, is continuing to print money at the same crazy pace as before. The central bank promised to reduce its asset purchases, but by refusing to hike its rates and continuing to grow its balance sheet, it is exacerbating the rise in prices even more. There is ever more money in c...

The consumer prices index (CPI) published in the United States is a shock for the last of the faithful believers still clinging to the myth of ‘transitory’ inflation. Prices of gold and silver are breaking out. Over the long term, we note that this Gold/Copper pairing is a fairly reliable indicat...

With the sheer quantity of cash accumulated in bank accounts in Western countries, the disruption to supply chains and the melting of the stocks in the futures markets (the last ‘tools’ that are putting the brakes on the rise in precious metals), the virus of physical gold and silver will likely...

The rise in the price of gold in a cycle of yield increases is the signal that the monetary authorities are late to act on the inflationary cycle. Historically, gold has never performed so well as when the central banks ‘run’ after inflation, and lag behind in terms of the rate of increase. Today...

The tension on the copper prices is at risk of spreading to other metals such as magnesium, aluminum, silver, tin, zinc...These rises are not limited to the metals sector. All of the prices of commodities are undergoing a rise that is accelerating as the markets re-evaluate the extent of the mone...

We have entered the cycle of stagflation, which combines a continuous rise in prices and a slowing down of economic activity, precisely because of these sudden losses of purchasing power.

After the Kaplan scandal, the Fed is fighting against another case of suspected insider trading this week. This time, the case concerns the trades made by the vice-president of the U.S. central bank, Richard Clarida. Clarida traded millions of dollars out of a bond fund into stock funds one day b...

But the gold prices are not responding to the law of supply and physical demand. They are dependent on transactions on the futures markets, where the fund managers have more influence over the prices thanks to their paper investments with a high leverage effect...even if they don’t have a single...

Even if one were to print money and give it away for free in order to prop up consumption, it would be impossible to avoid the consequences, which are now clearly visible, of the inflation created by this monetary madness. The difficulties at the level of the production chain brought about by thi...

The pressure on the level of salaries is not going to stop any time soon.The violence of this inflationary shock is going to be felt this fall on the consumer prices. Businesses will have no choice but to pass on the dizzying rise in costs that they are experiencing to the consumer.

Since the start of this century, gold has offered a far better return than bonds. It was this outperforming of the bonds by gold that took it into its bullish phase from 2002 to 2010. The central banks intervened in 2010 to break this cycle, but we have initiated a second cycle of gold outperform...

In this irrational environment, it is entirely natural to see more and more investors seeking to protect their savings by means of investments such as physical gold, which is regaining a certain appeal in this climate of a headlong forward dash by the central banks.

The inflation is spreading. Is it this new risk associated with inflation that has prompted the unusual demand for physical gold in recent weeks? Gold is being seen here as a refuge from an out-of-control event linked to the new risks engendered by this inflation.

Gold and silver are yet to benefit from the rise in the prices of the other assets; they are thought of as a currency, and not as commodities. These low prices are a bargain.

Acting straight away on the rates would have an even more devastating effect on the system as a whole. This is the impasse that the central banks have now got themselves into, in their interventionist policies. Acting straight away will break the engine. That’s what the math is telling us. Gold a...

The true price of gold and silver will be the one that is displayed after the shift from paper to physical. The current price reflects precisely the preponderance of the financial market over the market for real assets. But for how long?