Gold's 100-day correlation with the S&P 500 has reached a multi-decade high, and Mike McGlone says that makes gold a "stock puppet" rather than a safe haven right now.
Everyone else is watching whether inflation or interest rates will decide gold's next move. McGlone says it no longer matters — gold, copper and most metals are now trading like risk assets, tied to a stock market he thinks is overdue for a serious correction.
"You just never want to buy a store value oxymoron when it's two times the vital to the S&P 500."
McGlone is senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, a three-decade veteran of commodity markets who previously spent years at S&P itself.
I listened to the full interview so you can skip it. 34 minutes of audio, 13 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, a three-decade veteran of commodity markets who previously worked at S&P
🎙️ Host: David Lin, a former BCA Research macroeconomics researcher who now runs The David Lin Report
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on YouTube
🔴 YouTube | 🟢 Spotify | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 34 min | ✅ Time saved: 21 min
Key Takeaways
Gold's 100-day correlation with the S&P 500 has hit a multi-decade high, which is why McGlone calls it a stock puppet rather than a hedge
He expects gold could fall back toward $3,000 before eventually holding above $5,000
A lifelong Republican, McGlone says he might vote Democratic down the ticket this cycle over Trump's $5,000 midterm pledge
He calls the promise a classic sign of desperation and expects a Republican sweep-against in the midterms
Copper is "an accident waiting to happen," with hedge funds running 20% to 30% of open interest net long and inventories at record highs
Oil above $100 "breaks stuff," and McGlone expects a reversal like 2008's, when crude fell from $147 to about $40 within the year
Gold has beaten the S&P 500's total return for almost 30 years, the longest such stretch in the data he can access — which he reads as a reason to expect reversion, not proof gold keeps winning
The US stock market is worth about $82 trillion against roughly $40 trillion of federal debt — more than twice the liability, which he calls the real asset side of the ledger
He calls this economic moment "the endgame": inflation from the oil shock is forcing the Fed's hand, and a subsequent deflationary bust is his base case
Bitcoin is one of his best leading indicators, and he reads its recent break below key resistance as a signal the whole reflation trade is turning down
1. The Bear-Case Snapshot
Lin opened with the day's numbers: WTI and Brent both above $100, stocks lower, gold and bitcoin down, and yields rising.
The cross-asset picture on the day was uniformly weak. "Both WTI and Brent crude are above $100." "The S&P is down 50 basis points. The Nasdaq is down about 50 basis points. Gold's down 1.5%. Bitcoin's down 2%."
The 10-year yield is closing in on a level McGlone's audience has been warned about for months. He put it at "the highest since 2023 4.92%," inching toward the 5% mark
McGlone opened by crediting Lin's own interviewing for making him "look and sound like I know more than" he really does, before turning to the day's news
2. Trump's $5,000 Promise
Lin read out a news story: Trump has pledged $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans hold the House and Senate in the midterms. "This promise would, dubious promise, according to the AP, would most likely cost $1 trillion, require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country's nearly $1.8 trillion annual deficit." Lin asked McGlone, a self-described neutral conservative, for his reaction.
McGlone said the pledge crosses a line he has never crossed himself. "I always just vote Republican down the ticket. The first time my life I might vote Democratic down the ticket just to push back on we need democracy in this country. You don't pay people to vote for your party. Just this is anathema, but it's a classic sign of severe desperation."
He reads Trump's public indifference to the midterms as the opposite of what it sounds like. When Trump repeats that he doesn't care about the midterms, McGlone said, "that usually means he does" — and takes it as a sign the war in Iran is going badly for him politically
His read on the average voter is grounded in cost of living, not geopolitics. Most people, he said, care less about Iran than about their next electricity bill, health-care bill, heating oil and insurance, and things are "much worse now for your average person" than two years ago, before Trump was elected
He expects a Republican sweep against, driven by voters rather than officials. Most Republicans privately want Trump gone, in his telling, but only voters can say so out loud
The market read, in his words: "This gimmick is a sign of desperation." Markets fell during both of the last two midterm election years, 2018 and 2022, on an S&P 500 total-return basis, and he expects this one to be contentious too
The Fed's own pricing backs up his volatility call. "Fed funds are priced for hikes one year out. They're priced for 60 basis points of hikes. That's the most on a one-year future since 2021 Q4."
3. Gold Is a Stock Puppet Now
Lin pointed to rising odds of a Fed hike — the CME FedWatch tool at 67% to 68% — partly on the back of $100 oil, and asked what else was driving gold lower.
Gold's correlation with stocks has broken from its historical pattern. Typically gold runs flat or negative against the stock market; instead its 100-day correlation with the S&P 500 has reached a multi-decade high, around 0.52, and its volatility versus the S&P 500 is roughly double — the widest gap in 20 years
It is also unusually expensive against bonds. "It's the highest versus a Treasury bond index in 40 years"
He still expects gold to hold a wide range long-term, but the near-term path is down first. He said gold could "get back down to 3,000" before eventually holding above $5,000. "It should be in this range forever."
His rule for the metal right now: you're supposed to be selling when they're yelling. He said sentiment has swung from despair to excitement in a way that mirrors what happened to Bitcoin a year ago, and that he has turned tilted toward a bearish near-term view on gold as a result
He measured just how far above trend gold has run. Gold bottomed near $1,600 — its 60-month moving average — in the fourth quarter of 2022, which he called the real buying opportunity. It is now roughly 60% above that average, the highest reading on a year-end basis since close to 1980, comparable to the 2011 peak
The rest of the metals complex isn't just gold. Silver, platinum and iron ore have all pumped and then dumped this year too, while gold is still up about 1% on the year. "The key thing to remember about gold is it's been part of that pumped and done scenario that started with Bitcoin in the beginning of the year"
4. Copper's Accident Waiting
Asked about the day's 5% drop in copper, McGlone called it the clearest case of all.
Positioning is extremely one-sided. Hedge funds have been net long copper since it broke above $5 a pound last year. "They've been running 20 to 30% of total open interest net long. They're way long."
Exchange inventories are at a record. Roughly 70% of major-exchange copper inventories are now sitting in CME or LME-type warehouses, which he called the highest share ever — "That's the highest ever. That's like 700,000 tons."
The volatility-versus-return math has flipped this year, which is exactly what worries him. "And if you look at copper over the last three, four years, it trades at two to three times the volatility of the S&P 500 and it's underperformed. Now, this year's performed. That's an accident waiting to happen."
The correlation to stocks is now the highest on record. He put copper's 100-day correlation with the S&P 500 at its highest level since the contract began trading in 1988. His rule of thumb: "correlations go to one to one in down markets" — the reverse of the calm, low correlation seen when markets are rising — and he takes the current reading as a warning
He does not currently see copper leading stocks, though it has at times in the past — right now, he said, it has been lagging the S&P 500 since 2023, even as the two markets track closely once the extra zeros are stripped off the S&P's price
5. Oil Breaks Everything
Lin asked how the current oil spike ends. McGlone's answer leaned on 2008.
He does not think the current level is sustainable, and the damage is already visible in diesel. "Diesel right now about $6 a gallon." He called diesel "the grease of the global economy" and said the pain is spreading through Europe and Asia too, hitting natural gas hardest
Natural gas is the clean signal underneath the noise, in his telling — it has already turned lower. The January contract is "$380 per mmmbu that's the lowest since the end of 2021 right before Russia invaded Ukraine," which he called the leading indicator for where broader energy prices are headed
Retail gasoline is the number that moves public sentiment, and it is approaching a level that triggered him personally in 2008. He recalled becoming bearish the moment he saw gas hit $4 a gallon that year. "Even with unleaded gas, which is right now in this country around $4.20, every single time it's gone down to two, has coincided with the stock market going down."
The historical pattern he expects to repeat is sharp and fast. Crude spiked to an all-time high of $147 in 2008 and was trading near $40 by year-end; unleaded gasoline spiked to $4 and fell back to $2 over the same stretch
He thinks $100 is close to the ceiling for this move, having already been wrong once on the level. He had expected $120 to be the peak earlier in the year
The bigger US supply picture, in his view, guarantees the reversal eventually. The US and Canada are running crude and liquids surpluses of about 8 million barrels a day — flat just a few years ago — and he expects Argentina, Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela to keep adding production, with Venezuela's output roughly set to double within a year after already rising 30%
The stock market, not the oil price itself, is the trigger he is actually watching. "The key thing that hasn't broken is US stock market," and if it does, he expects the reversal to cascade quickly through crude and the rest of the commodity complex
6. The Gold-vs-Stocks Fight
Lin showed McGlone his own chart of gold versus the S&P 500 over the past century, which shows gold badly lagging stocks over the long run, and asked him to explain it.
He turned the chart into a challenge to the market's own bulls. "I like to say, well, if the stock market's so great and all this AI is so great, how come it's not beating the rock?"
He also used the chart to flag how stretched stocks look by another measure. The S&P 500's value relative to Warren Buffett's favored gauge — market cap against GDP — is at its highest year-end level since 1928, in his account, which he takes as a signal that "something's going to give here"
Lin pushed back hard on the chart's starting point, arguing that gold was pegged to the dollar before 1973 and so could not have kept pace with equities before then, making the comparison unfair
McGlone conceded the specific critique but defended the exercise. He said the data he can access on the terminal only goes back to around 1890 using the Dow Jones Industrial Average rather than the S&P 500, and that on that longer index gold is down about 40% rather than the far larger S&P gap — while noting the Dow is a much narrower, 40-stock index that leaves out most of the recent technology boom
7. Stocks Are the Real Asset
McGlone closed the segment on debt with what he called his key fact for the year: comparing total government debt against the market value of US equities.
He sized both sides of the ledger. Total US debt is around $40 trillion, against "market cap around 82 trillion versus total debt"
His argument is that critics of the market cite the liability without the asset behind it. "But you can't point out a liability without pointing out the asset." By his math, the stock market is worth "2.1 times that liability," which he called unstoppable
He grounded the same point in the S&P 500's own design, calling the index "beta to the world" that benefits from survivorship bias — dropping weak companies and adding strong ones — while also tracking human ingenuity and the ability to profit over the long term "in a decent well-managed society"
He still thinks gold belongs in a portfolio for people outside the US, since most countries lack America's rule of law and institutional checks — but for now he is tilting toward Treasuries instead, at a current 10-year yield of "T- bonds at right now 5.34%"
8. Why He Calls It the Endgame
Lin's closing questions pressed McGlone on whether the resilience of stocks through the oil shock argues for more bullishness, not less.
He rejects the resilience argument directly. Asked if stocks holding up through the oil spike is bullish, he said no, and described the moment as a "pretty severe historic" stage where a lot of well-invested people simply won't sell because of the tax bill
His deflation call from earlier in the year still stands, just delayed and sharper when it lands. He compared the setup to 2008 and to the European Central Bank's 2008 hike followed by aggressive cuts once stocks fell, and said energy is the number-one source of both the current inflation and the deflation he expects to follow
He is watching bonds as the trade that pays off when the reversal comes. "If you look at TLT or bonds is basically it's essentially a put on the S&P 500 with positive carry, no time decay"
He put a number on what a correction would mean for the real economy. With the stock market's value near 2.5 times GDP, he said, a 10% drop in equities equals roughly 25% of GDP in lost paper wealth, before accounting for any hit to consumer spending from the wealth effect
His biggest miscalculation this year was political and military, not financial. He had expected the US to suppress Iran's offensive military capability quickly once war broke out; more than six months in, Iran has kept showing "pretty significant offensive capabilities," which he said is compounding the inflation shock rather than resolving it
9. Bitcoin as Leading Indicator
Asked what else he was watching, McGlone pointed to Bitcoin.
He treats Bitcoin as one of his most reliable leading indicators, and it has just flashed a bearish signal. "It's just broke up to a decent resistance level and I think it's heading back downward. So I'm looking that as a decent leading indicator. If it stays below 80, which was key resistance, and just goes back down to the trend, it might be what led everything up is leading everything back down."
He grouped grains into the same "stock puppet" framework as metals. Soybean oil is up about as much as crude oil this year — both are fuel inputs — and diesel costs are baked into the price of transporting food, so he watches diesel as a proxy for the whole agricultural complex
Bonus Insights
McGlone admitted he provoked his own audience on purpose with the gold-versus-stocks chart. "I did that intentionally. I needed to agitate a little bit. As Frederick Douglass, a famous abolition leader, used to say, sometimes you have to agitate. And I'm agitating with facts."
A one-time corn-belt farmer himself, McGlone said this year's growing season did something he has never seen: too much rain in July hurt corn yields instead of helping them, while wheat and soybeans rose for separate reasons — wheat on an early-year drought and the war in Ukraine, soybeans on soybean oil tracking crude. "No, that's really the first of all corn is going down because at the beginning of the year yields are expected in this country to be about 186 bushels. That was on a record and now they're dropping below 180. They're just collapsing."
Lin closed by asking where to follow him. McGlone pointed listeners to X, where he posts as Mike McGlone111, and to LinkedIn under his Bloomberg Intelligence title.
McGlone's bottom line is that nearly everything he tracks — gold, copper, grains and now Bitcoin — has become a leveraged bet on the same stock market, and he expects that market's eventual correction to drag all of them down together before the deflation he has been forecasting finally arrives.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Bloomberg Intelligence (McGlone's employer, where he is senior commodity strategist)
CME Group and the London Metal Exchange (The warehouses now holding a record share of the world's copper inventories)
iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) (McGlone's example of a long-duration bond position acting as a low-cost hedge against a stock-market correction)
CME FedWatch Tool (The tool David Lin cited for the market's rising odds of a Fed rate hike)
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