Why didn't gold rally?

Last week handed gold every catalyst gold owners wait for.

Brent crude settled near $108 on Thursday, its highest in almost four months, as the war with Iran widened. 

August producer prices posted their largest monthly jump since May. Friday's CPI put annual inflation at 3.4%, with gasoline up 3.9% on the month and leading the increase.

War. Energy shock. Accelerating inflation.

Gold opened Friday at its lowest level in over a month, heading for a losing week.

The mechanism runs in a straight line.

Higher oil feeds inflation. Higher inflation raises the odds the Fed hikes on Wednesday, odds that ran to roughly 90% after Friday's print. 

And every increase in expected rates raises the cost of holding an asset that pays nothing.

Gold owners absorbed a rate scare that had nothing to do with gold, for one reason: their metal produces no income to offset it.

Monetary Metals clients can lease their metal to qualified businesses and earn up to 4% yield on gold, paid in gold.

Not dollars. Ounces.

War can move gold $100 in either direction overnight. Leasing doesn’t remove that volatility, but it gives your gold another job: earning more ounces while the world fights over what those ounces are worth.

You cannot control the Strait of Hormuz. 

You cannot control the price of crude or what the Fed decides on Wednesday.

You can control whether your ounces earn.

Central banks have understood this for years. 

They hold gold because it sits outside anyone else's balance sheet, and they've averaged roughly 1,000 tons of purchases a year for four consecutive years, double the pace of the prior decade.

They aren't waiting for a good exit.

Gold didn't fail last week. It did what a non-yielding asset does when rates are expected to rise.

Yours doesn't have to be one.

Put your gold to work.

Your gold is built for uncertainty. Could it also be earning through it?