Jesse Felder

Founder & Publisher, The Felder Report

The macro setup for gold is the most compelling I've seen in 20 years of following markets.

Background

Jesse Felder founded The Felder Report in 2013 after a career that included working at Bear Stearns and co-founding a multi-billion dollar hedge fund. He subsequently transitioned to independent research and public commentary, applying a Buffett-influenced value investing framework to macro analysis. His work is notable for its disciplined use of long-term valuation metrics — he is one of the more prominent users of the "Buffett Indicator" (total market cap to GDP ratio) as a signal for equity overvaluation.

Felder's gold commentary has grown more prominent as macro conditions have shifted in gold's favour. He approaches gold not as a perma-bull ideology but as a cyclical macro call — he turns bullish on gold when his framework signals that real interest rates are negative, fiscal deficits are expanding, and equity valuations are historically stretched, creating the conditions under which gold has historically outperformed.

Investment Thesis

Felder's gold thesis is anchored in the relationship between real interest rates and gold returns — the observation that gold outperforms most strongly when inflation-adjusted Treasury yields are negative. He argues that the structural fiscal situation of the United States (persistent deficits, growing interest burden, political inability to reduce spending) means the Fed will be unable to maintain meaningfully positive real rates for extended periods without triggering a recession severe enough to force policy reversal. This creates a persistent tailwind for gold.

He also applies his macro valuation framework to gold mining equities, arguing that when gold miners trade at historically low price-to-cash-flow multiples relative to spot gold, the sector offers asymmetric risk-reward that surpasses physical gold on a risk-adjusted basis. His combination of macro timing signals and equity valuation discipline gives his gold commentary more operational specificity than pure narrative advocates.

Critiques & Limitations

Felder's gold commentary is disciplined and quantitatively grounded, but his framework — like all macro timing models — can produce signals that are correct in direction but significantly early in timing, creating real-world performance drag. His mining equity valuation thesis has notably underperformed as cost inflation has structurally impaired mining multiples relative to historical norms. His audience and publication scale is smaller than the heavyweight tier, meaning his work receives less institutional validation and adversarial challenge than it might warrant given its quality.

Notable Calls