1st Quarter 2017 – And The Winner Is…. Silver!

Today we look back at the first quarter of the calendar year, and the first full quarter under the presidency of Trump.  The quarter also saw the US quietly pass a significant milestone which should have investors paying full attention.  But first let’s look at the numbers:

From Zerohedge:

• Nasdaq best Quarter since Q4 2013
• S&P best quarter since Q4 2015
• Dow up 6 quarters in a row - since The Shanghai Accord (the longest streak since Q4 2006)
• Financials up four quarters in a row
• USD Index second worst quarter since Q3 2010
• Gold second best quarter since Q3 2012
• WTI Crude's worst quarter (and first losing quarter) since Q4 2015
• US Crude Production had biggest quarter since Q3 2014

Or pictorially

Zooming in on that right axis you can see gold, noted as the top performer, saw an 8% rise this last quarter.  But the chart is incomplete… Silver is up another 50% at 12%.

At home:

The perplexingly strong AUD took some of the shine off those USD spot rises with gold up 2% and silver up 7% in Aussie dollars.  The All Ords was in between those, finishing the quarter in a late rush with its best week in a very long time to bring it up to 3.2% for the quarter.

As mentioned above the quarter also was notable for the US having passed, just last month, the average interval between recessions in the modern era.  Since 1980, deemed the ‘modern era’ in which we’ve enjoyed unprecedented financial deregulation, the average time between recessions in the US has been 7 ¾ years.  So since the GFC ended in 2009 we are now freshly past that average.  If you look more broadly, going back to the post war era since 1945 the average is just 5 years…

By contrast Australia looks on the cusp (this quarter) of breaking the world record of 26 years held by Netherlands.   But that is not all it appears.  We will discuss this in more detail tomorrow…