Gold spent last week being our most uncomfortable holding, and this week it tried to make friends again. It closed at $4,071.10, up $60.80, clawing back the $3,997 level we wrote about twice — when it was down 25% from January and falling on exactly the news it exists to hedge.
One good session does not settle an argument. The January drawdown asked a real question — does gold actually catch an equity fall — and a $60.80 up-day is not the answer, it is a mood.
So the position is unchanged: held, and sized, precisely as it was when the number was worse. A haven is a stated percentage you rebalance back to, not a conviction you ride up and abandon on the way down.
Here is the part worth saying plainly for the book. The hardest thing in portfolio management is to treat a good week and a bad week identically, and gold is this year’s test of it. We did not add at the January bottom and we are not adding into this bounce, because the position is governed by a percentage, not by how the last five sessions felt. The metals sleeve is our worst performer of the year and we keep saying so out loud — a sleeve you only defend when it is winning was never a hedge.
Gold stays held. The metals sleeve (WPM, RGLD, IAU) was our worst position of the year and we said so; a recovery week makes that sentence easier to say, not truer or falser. We neither added at the bottom nor dumped it — a hedge you sell at the low was never a hedge, just a trade in a costume.