Investment Advice During Inflationary Periods with High Asset Price Inflation
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Investment advice during inflationary periods with high asset price inflation How to preserve your value and realize best possible return by investing in the right asset classes during periods of uncontrolled inflation and economical instability Daniel Wardzynski Supervisor: Dr. Emil Numminen Master’s Thesis in Business Administration, MBA programme Date of submission: 2011-06-17 ABSTRACT For the past few years, the world has gone through a global financial crisis, and is still on a quite unstable road to a sustainable economic future. While the governments are trying to cope with a stable inflation rate, investors grow weary and are looking more into precious metals. That is why I investigate the government stimulation as well as the precious metal investment sector in this thesis. The thesis is divided in two important parts. The purpose of the first part was to determine the impact of the United States government intervention, by deliberate injection of new money, through Quantitative Easing - QE, into the monetary system and money supply, during periods of unstable economy in order to control the inflation rate. The second part of the thesis advises on an investment strategy in precious metals during times of high asset price inflation. Research and data collection was performed through a vast review of relevant literature within both traditional and opposing economical theories, principles, and beliefs, along with theories related to general market efficiency and shrewd investment. The research is based on collected quantitative data and mathematical statistical methods. The result and conclusions tell us that one can safely assume that government intervention through injecting money into the monetary system and increasing the money supply does support higher stock values, especially gold mining stocks. Some of the main findings of this thesis are: A short explanation of different and often opposing economical theories that discuss the importance of money and inflation and how to prevent, through either deliberate control or not, an economical meltdown. A short empirical investigation of how the monetary injection programs, by the Federal Reserve, such as Quantitative Easing, impacts the general market, represented by the S&P 500 index. An important investment advice on how to invest during times when governments inflate prices and how the precious metals asset class, represented by the HUI index, are yielding higher profits while at the same time protecting investors wealth in an unstable economy. KEYWORDS: Federal Reserve, Fed, Inflation, Monetarism, Money, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, Ben Bernanke, S&P 500, SPX, Precious Metals, HUI, Gold Mining, Investment Strategy, Quantitative Easing, QE, Asset Price Inflation. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Emil Numminen, whose constructive criticism has helped raising the quality of this document. I would also like to thank all my teachers of this MBA program, life mentors and individuals who have inspired me to understand the world, its history, its global interconnectivity, different economy systems and its world implications and given me a new valuable perspective. Thank you as well, to my family members for you unconditional support. Finally, I would like to thank all the readers who I have specifically focused this thesis on and tried to make it as readable and interesting to all of you. I sincerely hope that you will find this thesis interesting and that it may open up a new perspective and interest for the world economy, our current situation and help you broaden your perspective with this new knowledge. Daniel Wardzynski The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. /Milton Friedman iii CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii FIGURES ................................................................................................................................ v 1. Introduction................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Background ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Problem Discussion ......................................................................................................... 1 1.3. Problem Development .................................................................................................... 3 1.4. Thesis Problem Formulation and Purpose ................................................................ 5 1.5. Limitations and De-limitations..................................................................................... 6 1.6. Thesis’ Structure ............................................................................................................. 7 2. Theory ............................................................................................................................. 8 2.1. Literature Review ............................................................................................................ 8 2.1.1. Monetarism ................................................................................................................................ 8 2.1.2. Monetary Inflation ................................................................................................................... 9 2.1.3. Irving Fisher Equation ......................................................................................................... 10 2.1.4. Quantitative Theory of Money .......................................................................................... 10 2.1.5. John Maynard Keynes and Central Banking ................................................................ 11 2.1.6. Quantitative Easing - QE .................................................................................................... 12 2.1.7. Market Portfolio & Diversification ................................................................................. 13 2.1.8. EMH – Efficient Market Hypothesis .............................................................................. 13 2.2. Theory Discussion .........................................................................................................15 3. Method ......................................................................................................................... 17 3.1. Importance of Scientific Methods ..............................................................................17 3.2. Data Collecting Methods Used ...................................................................................17 3.2.1. Quantitative or Qualitative ................................................................................................. 18 3.3. Quantitative Data ..........................................................................................................18 3.4. Analysis Methods Used ................................................................................................19 3.5. Data Types Used ............................................................................................................20 3.6. Index .................................................................................................................................20 3.7. Trend ................................................................................................................................20 3.8. Pie Charts ........................................................................................................................21 3.9. Bar Chart ........................................................................................................................21 3.10. Correlation ......................................................................................................................21 3.11. Significance Testing ......................................................................................................22 3.12. Sharpe Ratio ...................................................................................................................22 4. Case Description ........................................................................................................ 23 4.1. Standard & Poor’s - S&P 500 Index and its Constituents .................................23 4.2. Amex Gold BUGS - HUI Index and its Constituents ............................................25 4.3. Quantitative Easing vs. the S&P 500 Index ............................................................26 4.4. Market Portfolio vs. the Gold Mining Shares ........................................................27 5. Analysis........................................................................................................................ 29 5.1. Asset Price Inflation ......................................................................................................29 5.2. Investment Strategy ......................................................................................................30 iv 6. Empirical Findings and Results ............................................................................