By Paul Price
Oil, Gold or Stocks? Only one beat inflation since 1980.
Middle-Eastern tensions have sent oil prices soaring. Worldwide Central Bank QE programs (money printing) have driven investors out of fiat-based currencies and into hard assets and commodities.
Did owning oil or gold work to protect real wealth since inflation got truly ugly in 1980? The charts shown below tell the story. Today’s constant-dollar price of oil is eerily similar to where it sat about 33 years ago.
Ignore the costs of more than three decades of storage and maintenance. Pretend you would not have capitulated during the horror of holding through almost a 90% draw down in value. Congratulations, at the present elevated quote you are back to about where you started.
Gold Bugs will be quick to say you should have gone with precious metals in order to counter inflation. In fact, the constant-dollar, per-ounce price of gold is also about where it was at the mid-point of its surge to the old nominal peak of $857 during 1980.
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