> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.leadlagreport.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Oil Fell 18% in November. Gold Hit a 13-Month Low Anyway. - URL: https://www.leadlagreport.com/oil-fell-18-in-november-gold-hit-a-13-month-low-anyway/ - Published: 2026-11-14T14:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-14T14:00:01.000Z - Description: Brent is down 18.5% this month and gold still closed at its lowest since October 2025. The 10-year real yield, at 2.86%, explains more of gold's year than oil or the war. - Author: Michael A. Gayed, CFA - Tags: Macro Observations ## *Today’s Lead-Lag Report post is sponsored by* [*Sparkline*](https://etf.sparklinecapital.com/itan/?utm%5Fsource=substack%5Fleadlag&utm%5Fmedium=email) ![Sparkline Intangible Value ETF (ITAN)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/09/sparkline_header_clean.png) Looking for a fresh take on value investing? [ITAN](https://etf.sparklinecapital.com/itan/?utm%5Fsource=substack%5Fleadlag&utm%5Fmedium=email) helps investors modernize their U.S. value allocations, providing exposure to innovative, intangible-rich companies at attractive prices. 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Gold Hit a 13-Month Low Anyway. ### *Brent has given back all of October's spike and gold has not recovered a dollar of it. The number that explains gold this year is not the oil price or the war. It is the 10-year real yield, which closed Thursday at 2.86%, and silver is the same trade with roughly twice the swing.* **MICHAEL A. GAYED, CFA** ## Key Highlights - The gold ETF (GLD) closed Thursday at $354.89, down 28.4% from its January 29 high and at its lowest close since October 2, 2025\. Brent crude is down 18.5% so far in November, so gold made that low while oil was falling.\[1\] - The 10-year inflation-protected Treasury yield was 1.89% on the day gold peaked and 2.86% on Thursday. Outside of a few weeks this autumn, it was last that high in November 2008.\[2\] - The market's 10-year inflation forecast fell over the same stretch, from 2.35% to 2.24%. All of the rise in Treasury yields since January is a higher price of money, not more expected inflation.\[3\] - On the 10 days since the peak when the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) lost 1.5% or more, GLD fell an average of 1.87% and rose only three times. Brent rose an average of 3.36% on those days.\[1\] - The silver ETF (SLV) is down 57.3% from its January high. On the 40 days GLD has dropped 1.5% or more since the peak, SLV has fallen 1.88 times as much on average.\[1\] ## The Test Gold Just Failed On November 1 I wrote that the market was treating the Iran war as a central bank problem, and that gold was acting as a source of cash, not a hedge.\[8\] That piece was written at the end of a month in which Brent rose 13.6% and gold futures settled down 6.49%.\[9\]\[10\] There was an obvious objection. If oil is what frightens central banks, then gold should recover when oil comes back down. November has run that experiment. Brent closed October at $117.64 and closed Thursday at $95.82, a decline of 18.5% in nine trading days.\[1\] The October spike is gone, and more. If gold's problem were oil, this would have been the relief. It was not. GLD is down 0.3% for the month and closed Thursday at $354.89, its lowest close since October 2, 2025.\[1\] Reuters reported that spot gold hit its lowest level since October 2025 during that session.\[6\] Gold futures closed at $3,885.30, which is 26.9% below the January 29 close of $5,318.40.\[1\] So gold fell when oil rose in October and failed to recover when oil fell in November. That tells me oil was never the variable. Oil was one of several things pushing on the variable that matters, which is what investors are paid, after inflation, to hold a Treasury instead of a metal that pays nothing. ![Gold futures and the 10-year real yield, inverted, January 2 to November 12, 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/mo1113g_1_gold_real_yield.png) ## The Price of Money On January 29, the day gold peaked, the 10-year inflation-protected Treasury yielded 1.89%.\[2\] That is the real yield: the return a buyer locks in above inflation for ten years. On Thursday it was 2.86%.\[2\] It reached 2.95% on October 5, the high for the year.\[2\] Before this autumn, the last time the Federal Reserve's series showed a reading that high was November 24, 2008.\[2\] Gold has no coupon and no earnings. Its competition is the safe real return available elsewhere. When that return was under 2%, giving it up to hold gold cost little. Near 3%, it costs about half again as much, every year, for as long as you hold. The link is visible in the weekly data, though it is not mechanical. In the 41 weeks since the peak, the real yield rose in 24, and GLD fell in 15 of those. The real yield fell in 17 weeks, and GLD rose in 10 of them. The correlation between the two weekly changes is negative 0.42.\[1\]\[2\] That is a strong tilt, not a law. Gold fell 10.3% in a single day on January 30 with the real yield almost unchanged, because a crowded position was unwinding.\[1\]\[2\] Positioning explains the speed of some of the declines. The real yield explains the direction. What I find most telling is where the rise in yields came from. The 10-year Treasury yield went from 4.24% on January 29 to 5.10% on Thursday.\[4\] The 10-year breakeven, which is the bond market's own forecast of average inflation over the decade, went from 2.35% to 2.24%.\[3\] Nominal yields rose 86 basis points and expected inflation fell 11\. The whole move, and a little more, is real. A gold bull needs the opposite mix. Gold does well when investors doubt that central banks will contain inflation, which shows up as rising breakevens and falling real yields. This year the bond market has priced a war, an oil shock and a Fed that is raising rates, and concluded that long-run inflation will be slightly lower than it thought in January. That is a vote of confidence in central banks, and gold is priced as the other side of that vote. ## What Happened This Week The week's events fit the pattern closely. On Tuesday the October consumer price index showed prices up 0.4% on the month against a 0.3% forecast, with core prices up 0.3% against 0.2%.\[5\] Hours earlier, Fed Governor Christopher Waller had said that a reading like that would lead him to consider a half-point increase in December. "Hiking only 25 basis points would put our credibility at risk," he said.\[5\] The 10-year real yield rose 12 basis points that day, from 2.66% to 2.78%, and was 2.86% by Thursday.\[2\] On Thursday, New York Fed President John Williams said more increases are likely.\[6\] Early Friday, CME FedWatch showed an 89% chance of a quarter-point increase in December and an 11% chance of a half point, according to Reuters.\[6\] Thursday is the day to study. Brent rose 3.3% as talks to end the war showed little progress.\[1\]\[7\] In the old playbook, a setback for peace and a jump in oil is a reason to own gold. GLD fell 2.8% and SLV fell 3.3%.\[1\] Reuters described the logic in one sentence: oil climbed, "spurring fears of higher inflation and elevated interest rates."\[6\] The market heard the second half of that sentence and acted on it. I think this is the cleanest way to say what has changed. Bad news from the Gulf used to reach gold directly, as fear. It now reaches gold through the Fed, as a higher expected policy rate, and by that route it arrives with the sign reversed. ## When Oil Jumped, Gold Mostly Fell I do not want to overstate this. Gold and oil have not moved in opposite directions all year. In 8 of the 11 months of 2026, counting November to date, GLD and Brent moved the same way.\[1\] Both rose in January and February. Both fell in the spring. The three exceptions are the months that matter. Brent has gained 10% or more in four months since the gold peak: 63.3% in March, 23.6% in July, 14.4% in September and 13.6% in October. GLD fell 11.1% in March, 6.8% in September and 6.6% in October. In July it rose 0.9%.\[1\] In the months when a war hedge was supposed to earn its place, it lost money three times out of four, and it lost the most in the month oil rose the most. ![Monthly change in GLD and Brent crude, January to November 12, 2026. Brent rose 10% or more in March, July, September and October; GLD fell in three of the four](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/mo1113g_2_monthly.png) The daily record says the same. Brent has gained 3% or more on 48 days since the gold peak. GLD rose on 15 of them and fell on 33, with an average change of negative 0.68%.\[1\] An oil spike has been roughly a two-in-three signal that gold falls that day. I covered the longer history of months like these on November 1, including how rare it is for oil to surge while gold sinks, and I will not repeat it here.\[8\] The addition from the last two weeks is the other half of the test. Gold did not rise with oil, and it did not rise without it. ## A Source of Cash Many investors hold gold for a second reason that has nothing to do with oil. They expect it to hold up when stocks fall. Since the January peak, that has not been the experience. SPY has lost 1.5% or more on 10 days since January 30\. GLD rose on three of them, most recently on November 5, and fell on seven. Its average change across the 10 days was negative 1.87%, against negative 2.01% for SPY itself.\[1\] On the days when a hedge was needed, gold lost almost as much as the stocks it was meant to protect. ![Average one-day change in SPY, GLD, SLV and Brent on the 10 days SPY fell 1.5% or more since January 30, 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/mo1113g_3_selloff_days.png) Ten days is a small sample, and I would not build a model on it. It is still consistent with how gold behaves when it is widely held and sitting on large gains. GLD rose 61% between the first and last trading days of 2025.\[1\] An asset that has done that becomes the thing investors can sell at a profit when they need to raise money or cut risk. That is what I mean by a source of cash. It says nothing about gold's merits over a decade. It describes who owned it in January and what they have done under pressure. The asset that did rise on those 10 days was Brent, by 3.36% on average.\[1\] That makes sense once you see which way the causation ran. Several of those stock declines were caused by oil. Higher crude raised the expected path of interest rates, and higher rates hit stocks and gold together. This year, the thing that went up on an oil shock was oil. That is an observation about 2026, not a forecast and not a recommendation. Brent has also fallen 18.5% in nine trading days this month, which is its own lesson about how fast that position can reverse.\[1\] ## Silver Is the Same Trade With More Swing Silver is often described as gold's industrial cousin, with its own story about solar panels and electronics. In 2026 it has traded as gold with the volume turned up. SLV closed Thursday at $45.12, down 57.3% from its January 28 high of $105.60.\[1\] It fell 28.5% on January 30 alone.\[1\] In October it lost 18.2% while GLD lost 6.6%.\[1\] The daily relationship is tight: since the peak, the correlation between the two funds' daily returns is 0.86, and SLV has moved about 1.8% for each 1% move in GLD.\[1\] ![GLD and SLV indexed to 100 at the January 29, 2026 close, through November 12, 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/mo1113g_4_silver.png) The leverage is most reliable on bad days. GLD has dropped 1.5% or more on 40 days since the peak. SLV fell further than GLD on 34 of them, and its average loss on those days was 5.35% against 2.85% for gold, a ratio of 1.88.\[1\] October 22 was typical: GLD down 2.6%, SLV down 5.6%.\[1\] On the 10 stock selloff days above, SLV averaged a loss of 3.85%, nearly twice that of the stock market.\[1\] The ratio between the two metals shows how far this has gone. An ounce of gold bought 46.6 ounces of silver on January 29 and 77.7 ounces on Thursday, using futures closes.\[1\] Part of that is the size of what came before. SLV rose 139% between the first and last trading days of 2025, more than twice GLD's gain, and positions built on that kind of run tend to come apart faster.\[1\] Silver has one more exposure that gold lacks. It has large industrial uses, so it is sensitive to growth as well as to rates. A Fed that is tightening into an oil shock is bad for both. One qualifier belongs here: silver has not made a new low this month. SLV is up 1.2% in November and its closing low for the move is still October 30, while gold made a fresh low on Thursday.\[1\] Two weeks is not a trend, but it is the first time since the peak that silver has held a level gold has broken, and I am watching whether it lasts. ## What Would Change My View My view is that gold and silver are being priced off the real yield, and that as long as the real yield is rising or pinned near its highs, bad news will not help them. Three things would tell me that has stopped being true. First, the real yield itself. If the 10-year real yield falls back below 2.52%, which was the highest level of the 2010 to 2025 period, and holds there, the main pressure on gold is easing.\[2\] A move back toward 2% would remove it. The most likely path to that is weaker growth data or a Fed that signals it is nearly done, and the December 9 decision is the next scheduled test.\[6\] Second, the price. On November 1 I named a close in gold futures above $4,330, the January 2 level, while Brent held above $110.\[8\] Brent is now near $96, so that exact condition cannot be met today.\[1\] The spirit of it stands. A gold close above $4,330 in a month when oil is rising would mean the market is paying for protection again. Gold futures last closed above that level on September 22.\[1\] Third, and most important, gold and oil rising together. In the four months since January in which Brent gained 10% or more, gold's best showing was a 0.9% rise in July.\[1\] If both rise strongly in the same month, with the 10-year breakeven moving up through its 2026 high of 2.50%, it would mean the bond market has started to doubt that central banks can contain the shock.\[3\] That is the environment gold is built for, and I would change my framing quickly. None of those has happened. The breakeven is 2.24%, further from that high than it was two weeks ago.\[3\] ## How This Fits What I Have Written This is the third time in a month I have come back to the same conclusion from a different direction. On October 26, after a fusion start-up said it had turned mercury into gold and the metal fell 3.3% in three sessions, I argued that the data pointed to real yields and not alchemy.\[9\] On November 1 I looked at October's split between oil and gold across central banks and regions.\[8\] Today's piece is the follow-up those two needed: oil reversed, the headline risk changed, and gold made a new low regardless. For anyone reviewing a portfolio, the practical point is about labels. An asset earns the word hedge by rising when the thing you fear happens. Since its January peak, gold has fallen in three of the four months that oil jumped, fallen on seven of the ten worst days for stocks, and fallen as the real yield climbed. That record does not make gold a bad asset. It makes it a rate-sensitive one, and it is worth knowing which of the two you own before the next headline from the Gulf. ## Notes 1. [Yahoo Finance daily closes for GLD, SLV, SPY, gold futures (GC=F), silver futures (SI=F) and Brent futures (BZ=F), January 2, 2025 to November 12, 2026\. Returns, averages, correlations, ratios and day counts are Lead-Lag Report calculations](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GLD/history/) 2. [Federal Reserve Board via FRED, Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 10-Year Constant Maturity, Inflation-Indexed (DFII10), through November 10, 2026; November 12 reading of 2.86% from the U.S. Treasury daily par real yield curve](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFII10) 3. [Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis via FRED, 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate (T10YIE), through November 12, 2026](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE) 4. [U.S. Treasury, Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates, 10-year, January 29 and November 12, 2026](https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily%5Ftreasury%5Fyield%5Fcurve&field%5Ftdr%5Fdate%5Fvalue=2026) 5. [CNBC, 10-year Treasury yield races back to 5% as inflation data, Waller comments drive rate hike expectations, November 10, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/10/us-bonds-treasurys-yields.html) 6. [Reuters via CNBC, Gold rises on bargain hunting but heads for weekly decline, November 13, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/13/gold-rises-on-bargain-hunting-but-heads-for-weekly-decline.html) 7. [BullionVault, Fed Rate Hawks Crush Gold Price $150 to New 13-Month Low, November 12, 2026](https://www.bullionvault.com/gold-news/gold-price-news/gold-inflation-fed-rate-hikes-111220261) 8. [The Lead-Lag Report, Oil Rose 13.6% in October. Gold Fell 6.5%. The Market Is Betting on the Central Banks](https://www.leadlagreport.com/oil-rose-13-6-in-october-gold-fell-6-5-the-market-is-betting-on-the-central-banks/) 9. [The Lead-Lag Report, Fusion Gold Is a Headline Today and a Price Ceiling Someday](https://www.leadlagreport.com/fusion-gold-is-a-headline-today-and-a-price-ceiling-someday/) 10. [Dow Jones via Morningstar, Comex Gold Ends the Month 6.49% Lower at $3885.70, October 30, 2026](https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/202610309644/comex-gold-ends-the-month-649-lower-at-388570-data-talk)