Any investor who tracks commodities knows that gold and oil have been among the year’s top performers. The price of gold per ounce has climbed over 10% from $1,281.30 on Dec. 31 toward a six-year high of $1,412 as of June 27, while the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) — the U.S. benchmark for crude — has surged more than 31% from $45.41 to $59.52 per barrel over the same period. Despite gold lagging the indexes a bit, oil has crushed both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500, which are respectively up 13.7% and 16.7% in 2019.
When the seemingly separate oil and gold markets experience bullish momentum at the same time, investors tend to give credence to a myth that oil and gold prices move in lockstep with one another. This largely has to do with the U.S. dollar: since both commodities are priced in the dollar, they become cheaper relative to foreign currencies when the value of the dollar falls. Once that happens, international demand for oil and gold briefly spikes and pushes their prices higher.
This is why market logic typically asserts that oil and gold prices move in tandem with one another. If one goes down, the other also goes down – and vice versa. Several analysts have noted that the correlation between the two is more assumed out of convenience than anything else. Evercore Partners Inc. (EVR) technical analyst Rich Ross, for instance, said back in 2015 that people simply like to think of investing in terms of baskets or groups: “People talk about a ‘bundle of commodities,’ and that’s just what they do—bundle them together. They buy or sell first and ask questions later.”
But oil and gold are hardly the commodity relatives investors like to think they are. According to data from Convergex going back to the 1970s, the two have an average 16% correlation on a 36-month interval basis. That’s because oil and gold heavily bifurcate their paths during periods of intense economic distress, particularly major economic recessions that cut the stock market in half. There’s vivid proof of this in the last three recessions over the last three decades: the early 1990s recession, the dot-com bubble, and the 2007-2008 financial crisis. During these periods of economic decline, oil prices sharply declined while gold prices either remained steady or climbed in value.
Their untethering was abundantly transparent during the most recent financial crisis, which lasted from the Dow Jones’ peak on Oct. 12, 2007, to its bottom on March 6, 2009. Over that period, the price of WTI plummeted more than 45% from $83.69 to $45.52 per barrel. That starkly contrasted the performance of gold prices, which gained nearly 26% from $748.70 to $942.70.
The biggest reason why oil and gold move in different directions during recessions comes from gold’s inherent value as a safe-haven investment. These types of investments often maintain or increase in value when the stock market nosedives, when the government releases less-than-stellar economic data, or when the Federal Reserve alludes to lower interest rates. In other words, people buy safe haves to hedge against stock losses they may incur from any of the three aforementioned reasons. Investors are seeing this right now, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s hints at a rate cut this year have boosted gold prices nearly 8% in June to a six-year high.
On the other hand, oil prices usually plunge when the economy crashes due to a significant reduction in consumer spending, which also reduces gasoline consumption since less people can afford to travel. As a result, oil demand falls since oil is used in the refining process to produce gasoline, ultimately leading to low oil prices.