gold, page-20917

The chart is a bit out of date (taken from a 2009 article¹) but it demonstrates what anyone who follows the evolution of the Fed's balance sheet² understands, that the assets purchased under QE were funded from external sources (mostly from growth in reserve deposits and sale of currency notes and coin), and not from "plucking money out of thin air".

For the expectation that QE would fuel massive inflations the gold bugs predicted and hoped for, "Currency in Circulation" would have to rise significantly (ahead of the rise in GDP). It hasn't.

The smarter players in the gold market figured this out in 2011 and it has been mostly one way traffic ever since.

1. http://www.frbsf.org/education/publ.../march/banks-excess-reserves-monetary-policy/
2. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/