The Magic of the Market
¿Es el oro una buena cobertura?
Martin Feldstein
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CAMBRIDGE – Mientras caminaba por el aeropuerto de Dubai hace poco, me impresionó la cantidad de viajeros que compraban monedas de oro. No era una reacción a los problemas financieros de Dubai; más bien se unían a la fiebre por comprar este metal antes de que los precios aumenten todavía más, reacción que ha hecho que su precio haya subido de $400 la onza en 2005 a más de $1100 en diciembre de 2009.
La compra de oro por parte de particulares va mucho más allá de las tiendas de aeropuertos y otros lugares donde se venden monedas de oro. Además de comprar monedas acuñadas por varios gobiernos, hay gente que está comprando barras de un kilo, fondos transados en bolsas que representan propiedad sobre oro físico, futuros en oro, y acciones en compañías auríferas que ofrecen una posición apalancada sobre el precio futuro del metal dorado.
Entre quienes compran oro se encuentran no sólo particulares, sino también sofisticadas instituciones y fondos soberanos. Hace poco, el gobierno de la India compró 200 toneladas de oro al Fondo Monetario Internacional.
Muchos de quienes compran oro quieren una cobertura contra el riesgo de inflación o posibles bajas en el valor del dólar u otras monedas. Ambos son riesgos potenciales serios para los que vale la pena tener una cobertura preventiva. Aunque en la actualidad la inflación es baja en Estados Unidos, Europa y Japón, los hogares y los inversionistas institucionales tienen razones para temer que los bajos tipos de interés y la amplia creación de reservas por parte de los bancos pueda producir inflación cuando se afirme la recuperación. Y el dólar a la baja, que ha perdido más del 10% de su valor con respecto al euro en los últimos 12 meses, es una causa legítima de inquietud para los inversionistas no estadounidenses que poseen esta moneda.
Sin embargo, ¿es el oro una buena cobertura frente a estos dos riesgos? ¿Mantendrá su poder de compra si la inflación erosiona el del dólar o del euro? ¿Y mantendrá el oro su valor en euros o yenes si el dólar sigue bajando?
La respuesta corta a todas estas interrogantes es “no". El precio en dólares del oro no aumenta con el nivel de precios de EE.UU. Y el valor del oro no aumenta en dólares para compensar el valor del dólar con respecto al euro o el yen.
Piénsese en el potencial del oro como cobertura frente a la inflación. El precio de una onza de oro en 1980 era $400. Diez años después, el índice de precios al consumidor (IPC) de EE.UU. había aumentado en más de un 60%, pero el precio del oro seguía en $400, tras haber llegado a $700 y caído en los años transcurridos desde entonces. Y para el año 2000, cuando el IPC de EE.UU. era más del doble del nivel de 1980, el precio del oro había caído a cerca de $300 la onza. Incluso cuando el oro llegó a los $800 la onza en 2008, no llegó a cubrir la inflación ocurrida desde 1980.
Así es que el oro no es una buena cobertura contra la inflación. Más aún, el gobierno estadounidense ofrece una muy buena cobertura de este tipo en la forma de Bonos del Tesoro Protegidos contra la Inflación (TIPS). Un bono a 10 años protegido contra la inflación no sólo dará intereses y capital a la par con el IPC, sino pagará también un tipo de interés real que hoy es ligeramente superior al 1%. Y, si el nivel de los precios cae, se emitirá un nuevo bono TIPS con el precio de compra nominal original, protegiendo así contra la deflación. Por supuesto, los inversionistas que no desean vincular sus fondos a bonos de gobierno de bajo rendimiento pueden adquirir coberturas explícitas contra la inflación como protección para sus demás inversiones.
El oro es además una mala cobertura contra las fluctuaciones cambiarias. Un dólar equivalía a 200 yenes en 1980. Veinticinco años después, el tipo de cambio había llegado a 110 yenes por dólar. Puesto que la onza de oro valía $400 en ambos años, tener oro no sirvió para compensar la caída del valor del dólar. Si un inversionista japonés tenía valores en dólares o bienes inmuebles, podría haber compensado el tipo de cambio adquiriendo futuros en yenes. Lo mismo vale para un inversionista basado en euros, que no se habría beneficiado al poseer oro, pero podría haber compensado la baja del dólar comprando futuros en euros.
En pocas palabras, hay mejores maneras que el oro de obtener cobertura contra los riesgos inflacionarios y cambiarios. Los bonos TIPS, o sus equivalentes de otros gobiernos, proporcionan cobertura contra la inflación, y los futuros de divisas explícitas pueden compensar los riesgos de los tipos de cambio.
Sin embargo, aunque el oro no es una cobertura adecuada contra estos riesgos, puede ser una muy buena inversión. Después de todo, el valor del oro en dólares casi se ha triplicado desde 2005. Y es un activo líquido que da diversificación en una cartera de acciones, bonos y bienes inmuebles.
No obstante, también es una inversión de alto riesgo y volatilidad. A diferencia de los valores, bonos y bienes inmuebles, el valor del oro no refleja las ganancias subyacentes. Se trata de una inversión puramente especulativa. En los próximos años, bien puede caer a $500 o subir a $2000 la onza. No hay manera de saber en qué dirección irá. Ya lo dice la expresión latina Caveat emptor (“Cuídese el comprador”).
Martin Feldstein, profesor de economía en Harvard, fue Presidente del Consejo de Asesores Económicos del Presidente Ronald Reagan y Presidente de la Oficina Nacional de Estudios Económicos.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org
Traducido del inglés por David Meléndez Tormen
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jruspini 07:37 26 Dec 09
The smug pseudo-sagacity of gold critics is a bit maddening when it is coupled with a lack of basic research.
The 1980 numbers parroted here from CNBC are cherry-picked. If you choose an earlier starting date, basically any date when gold was freely traded, you will see that gold does keep up with inflation.
More to the point, *real returns* describe the historical performance of gold better than inflation alone. From memory, all of gold's appreciation post 1980 came in months where the real return was less than 3%, so you need to consider yields as well as inflation. Since gold has no positive yield, it is attractive when real returns are low. (Except when it is monetized, when it is attractive in deflation *or* when real yields are low.)
To the extent that long yields are being driven by bond vigilantes, then, yes, gold may not be attractive.
-- Jason Ruspini
Adamon 03:09 28 Dec 09
It never ceases to amaze me as I read numerous authors, including this, claiming that
"Moreover, the US government provides a very good inflation hedge in the form of Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). A 10-year inflation-protected bond will not only provide interest and principal that keep up with the CPI, but also now pays a real interest rate that is now slightly more than 1%. And, if the price level should fall, a newly issued TIPS bond will return the original nominal purchase price, thus providing a hedge against deflation. "
The TIPS are taxed, the alleged protection against inflation IS TAXED. For somebody in, say, 28% taz bracket, a 5% "protection" is realyy only 3.6%. Amazing...
alexferro 08:52 28 Dec 09
I invite all you critics of the sound advice you got above:
1. Remove all the "pseudo- currencies" from the burial cans in your back-yards.
2. Use your pseudo-currencies to buy tin and lead.
3. Bury your tin and lead.
4. When hyper-inflatulation hits, I mean, hyper inflation hits, swap your tin and lead for all the world's gold and silver.
5. See - If you are the only person who took my advice and hoarded tin and lead now youll be the only person in the world having tin and lead.
a. ferro
shanethomas37 09:29 28 Dec 09
Je crois pour ma part que l'or est vraiment le placement à faire. J'ai lu sur le site où j'ai acheté de l'or, gold.fr, que l'or était une valeur refuge en temps de crise avec un très bon potentiel d'appréciation et je crois que les gens ne cherchent que cela, un valeur sûre pour s'y réfugier. Lorsque je vois le cours de l'or grimper, je me dis que d'acheter des 50 pesos mexicain fût une très bonne affaire.
fedupbook 12:59 29 Dec 09
Too long a comment to reply here, so I wrote my reply on my blog regarding the above article by Professor Feldstein:
Why Does Harvard Economics Professor Call Gold a High Risk, Highly Volatile Investment?
http://fedupbook.com/blog/gold/why-does-harvard-economics-professor-call-gold-a-high-risk-highly-volatile-investment/
cheeheongquah 03:43 01 Jan 10
You could easily say those cause you have the benefits of hindsight.
Ex-ante, gold is a real commodity and no matter how the price deeps there is still a real physical value. On the other hand, no one can actually guarantee paper securities but of course they are largely risk-adjusted and are pretty safe. But, since the last banking crisis we know that paper securities are highly vulnerable and their market values could fall permanently.
The next factor is that as you mentioned, everyone can purchase gold easily with virtually no information and transaction costs. On the contrary, not everyone can buy into bonds without adequate capital and information. There are implicit costs involved.
In another respect, gold was the internaitonal medium of exchange and unit of account before and hence it is widely accepted and liquid, unlike the inflation-indexed securities.
Chee-Heong Quah, MYS
tevincarey 10:10 04 Jan 10
@shane thomas
Tu peux m'en dire plus sur le site où tu as acheté ton or? Comment procède-t-on? Parce que je veux faire vite et prendre ma part avant qu'il soit trop tard!
zwolf 03:25 06 Jan 10
You say gold has an intrinsic value. What might that be? At base, no one will produce gold if they're not paid something above its production cost. Let's just guess that's about $500 an ounce. I remember when it was about $300, but I'll concede that commodity production costs have gone up the last few years. Industrial demand is sparse as there aren't many applications. Jewelry demand is a perennial, but even that gets substituted away as the price rises. The moderately expensive watch I bought my wife is stainless steel inset with diamonds, something the septuagenarian salesman told me would have been gold and silver years ago.
Now let's pick a starting point to compare gold to other assets. Gold futures started trading in January 1975, which makes a sensible starting point, becasue that's the point from which you could actually trade the stuff. It also allows a couple of years for the state adjustment from controlled prices to free markets that began in 1971. There are only 2 sustained periods in the last 35 years that gold outperformed other assets: the late 1970s and the last few years. Both were periods of policy uncertainty.
Paul Volcker put paid to the 1970s uncertainty starting in October 1979. Gold peaked in January 1980 and drifted for almost 25 years. I suspect that gold, once again, will turn out to be a poor investment for many years. Invest in wealth creation by buying equities or wealth preservation by buying bonds.
S&P500 and bonds (Government / Corporate Index) have utterly crushed gold in US dollar return terms since 1975 (and for almost all other periods since gold and currencies floated).
Gold is very expensive insurance for tail risk. It's not something I'd bet my retirement on.
tevincarey 06:29 06 Jan 10
@tevincarey
Pour ton information, le site www.gold.fr est en fait le site internet du Comptoir national de l'or que l'on retrouve notamment à Strasbourg, je ne sais pas si cela te dit quelque chose. C'est simple. Tu n'as qu'à t'enregistrer sur le site puis choisir tes pièces. Après, ils te livrent ton or chez toi via circuit sécurisé. Tu peux aussi garder l'anonymat si tu le souhaites.
catfishkeller 12:44 26 Jan 10
I have been really interested in this subject recently and specifically cannot find much writing on exactly why gold has been valued by so many cultures and for so long. It's shiny, it doesn't corrode, and can easily be formed into many things ornamental and there is a finite amount of it on earth. But specifically why is, or should gold (or any precious metal) be used as a vehicle for transporting wealth? You can’t eat it, it cannot heal you, it cannot provide you warmth or shelter. Gold cannot be used as any type of fuel, it cannot be made into a sturdy tool or weapon. What is the tradition that makes it valuable? Is it truly just tradition? Please share with me any research or writing that any of you might have on the subject. But please do not send me to biased writing on why gold is or isn’t a good investment, just real social and anthropological research on the subject. Thank you.
Irishman 05:13 04 Mar 10
Ah, Professor Feldstein, tell that to the residents of Zimbabwe who trusted their government's fiat dollars and are now starving because their fiat money is worthless. It is because I do not want my income and wealth to become worthless that I convert my dollars to gold as fast as I can. Can you point to an instance when a government has not inflated its fiat currency? 'Nuff said. http://www.jesus-on-taxes.com
passantgardant 10:16 26 Mar 11
While it's true that from 1980 to 1999, gold did not fare well, that's because central banks adopted the dual policy of gold divestment and petrodollar hegemony. That was obviously only a temporary policy though, since they eventually ran out of gold to sell and the Middle East didn't like us propping up their tyrants. It started falling apart when Saudi rebels attacked us on 9/11 and when Saddam decided to stop pricing his oil in Dollars in 2003 (which spawned the invasion). Since then, central banks have lost control and now it's a protracted short squeeze.
TIPS may correlate with inflation, as do stocks to some degree, but gold and silver are the only financial/monetary assets which are not also someone else's liability. The U.S. government can default on their bonds by either turning up the printing presses and causing hyperinflation (while drastically understating the CPI on which TIPS are based), or by simply not paying them back.
The problem with real estate, farm land, etc., is that it has carrying costs. You have to pay taxes and insurance on it, maintain it, negotiate with any renters, and worry about them defaulting on their obligations.
Gold suffers none of those issues. Gold does not depend on anyone else to pay you -- it is itself the valuable asset in your own possession. And other than buying a decent vault, it requires no further maintenance or thought at all. It's pure insurance. The only risk is that the economy will improve and you won't need its appreciation and wealth-protection properties. But you still keep the premium anyway! That's my kind of insurance!
If you want a real nuts-and-bolts, down-to-earth valuation for gold given your own individual inflation expectations, there's a cool online calculator located here:
http://passantgardant.com/gold-value-calculator
Just enter your estimated probability of various inflation rates, and this calculator will give you a fair value for gold as insurance against inflation using actuarial methods. It includes the ability to specify your own opportunity costs from holding gold instead of an interest-paying alternative. This way you can decide for yourself if gold should be a part of your inflation-hedging portfolio.
wroth5 06:57 26 Dec 09
Gold is a hedge against, not changes in currency values or inflation, but rather the collapse of unsustainable fiat currencies (for example the soon coming nightmare in the US regarding unfunded Medicare and Social Security liabilities, the nationalization of the still deteriorating mortgage system, and unlimited support to an insolvent banking system).