Ronni Stoeferle

Managing Partner & Fund Manager, Incrementum AG; Co-Author, In Gold We Trust

The annual In Gold We Trust report is the gold market's most detailed institutional roadmap.

Background

Ronni Stoeferle is a managing partner at Incrementum AG, an asset management firm based in Liechtenstein, and the principal author of the annual "In Gold We Trust" report — widely regarded as the most comprehensive and rigorous institutional research document on gold published anywhere in the world. The report, which Stoeferle co-authors with Mark Valek, has been published every spring since 2007 and runs to several hundred pages per edition, covering gold's role in monetary systems, macroeconomic cycles, central bank policy, geopolitics, and technical analysis with a depth unmatched by any other publicly available gold research.

Stoeferle's analytical framework is rooted in the Austrian School of economics — particularly the work of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek on business cycles, monetary theory, and the nature of money. He began publishing the "In Gold We Trust" report while working at Erste Group in Vienna, later co-founding Incrementum AG to manage client capital according to the same investment philosophy. Incrementum manages a range of gold-focused investment strategies and funds, and the firm has built a sustained institutional reputation for independent, research-driven gold investment management across European and global institutional clients.

Investment Thesis

Stoeferle's thesis on gold is grounded in Austrian business cycle theory and a long-duration view of monetary debasement and credit cycle dynamics. His core argument is that the credit expansion and monetary creation enabled by modern central banking inevitably creates boom-bust cycles of increasing severity, and that gold performs its most important protective function not during ordinary inflation but during the periods of monetary and financial distress that follow extended credit cycles. In the Austrian framework, gold is not merely an inflation hedge — it is the only monetary asset that exists entirely outside the credit system and therefore cannot be diluted, defaulted upon, or subjected to haircuts by any government or financial institution.

The "In Gold We Trust" report provides Stoeferle's most detailed and systematic expression of this thesis through exhaustive quantitative analysis. Each annual edition covers gold's performance through multiple analytical lenses: real interest rate dynamics, monetary aggregate growth, currency depreciation trends, mining supply and demand fundamentals, central bank policy trajectories, and geopolitical developments. The report also includes long-term price targets derived from monetary base models and historical valuation frameworks, and it has historically been among the first institutional publications to incorporate Bitcoin analysis alongside gold as a complementary monetary asset.

Stoeferle's cyclical analysis of gold draws on both Austrian theory and quantitative pattern recognition. He has articulated a framework in which gold moves through identifiable phases — extended base-building, early recognition, acceleration — and has sought to identify the transition between these phases using a combination of technical, fundamental, and macro indicators. His 2018-2019 research identifying gold's completion of its multi-year base and its approach to a decisive breakout above the $1,360 resistance level was among his more precisely calibrated directional calls, followed by gold's sustained breakout to new all-time highs in 2019-2020 and continued record highs through 2024.

Critiques & Limitations

The "In Gold We Trust" report is widely used as a reference publication on gold across the investment community, and Stoeferle's analytical credibility is high. Some critics note that Austrian School frameworks have a structural tendency to identify gold-positive implications in almost any macroeconomic scenario — whether the economy is expanding (credit risk building) or contracting (monetary stress) — which can make the framework appear to rationalize a predetermined conclusion rather than generate falsifiable predictions. The long-term price target of $4,800/oz, while derived from a documented monetary model, has drawn skepticism from those who argue that gold's monetary function may be structurally reduced by the emergence of digital monetary alternatives. Critics also note that Incrementum's business model — managing gold-focused investment funds — creates an institutional incentive toward persistently bullish gold narratives, though the firm's public documentation of its methodology is extensive.

Notable Calls