April Fool’s Day fell on a Sunday this year, but when the markets opened on Monday, the joke was on Wall Street bulls. The Dow and the Nasdaq were down in March, and for the first quarter of 2018. That ended a nine-quarter winning streak for Wall Street. I commented at the time that many high-profile equities remained overpriced.
Many bulls on Wall Street, however, said that April is often a good month for stocks (for the S&P 500, it’s been an up month 47 times and a downer 21 times in the last 50 years). They hoped for an instant rebound. But that’s not what happened…
I’m not here to celebrate other people’s losses. (Though I would say that many mainstream equities remain overpriced.)
What I do want to highlight is that gold did its job as a safe-haven asset that day.
This shows that, despite famous, longtime, anti-gold investors like Warren Buffett, history’s tried, tested, and proven safe-haven asset is alive and well, doing what it does best.
More specifically, it shows that investors are waking up to the dangers that an escalating trade war poses. As this doesn’t seem likely to blow over any time soon, that’s a trend investors would do well to pay attention to.
