Safe-haven demand for physical precious metals came in soft through the first half of the year as a rising stock market reinforced investor optimism toward the economy.

U.S. stocks are expensive by just about every valuation measure you can think of – price/earnings, price/sales, dividend yield, total market capitalization as a percentage of GDP, etc. Even Fed chair Janet Yellen remarked recently that equity valuations appeared “rich.”

The inverse of the extreme overvaluation in equities is the extreme relative cheapness of hard assets. Commodity indexes entered the summer at generational lows in real terms.

The perception has been that the world is awash in plentiful, cheap oil. Just a few years ago, with oil over $100 per barrel, the headlines blared warnings about peak oil and ... Read more »