The crypto crash earlier this week sparked a run to gold.
Regulatory concerns set off the panic. Bitcoin fell below $10,000 for a time, and other cryptocurrencies saw precipitous drops. Crypto markets appeared to have stabilized Thursday morning, with Bitcoin back up over $11,000.
The sudden plunge served as a reminder of the extreme volatility in the cryptocurrency markets. Bitcoin has seen swings of $10,000 over the last three months. As Bitcoin’s price fell through the floor this week, some investors sought out the stability and historical safe haven of gold.
Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 for a short time Wednesday (Jan. 17) as a selloff sparked by increased talk of government regulation spooked the market.
South Africa may run out of gold within four decades, according to the Environmental Economic Accounts Compendium published by African Statistics Day.
Analysts say that at current production levels, South Africa has only 39 years of accessible gold reserves remaining. This is significant considering South Africa ranks as the number five gold producing country in the world, and could be another sign the world is approaching, or has reached “peak gold.”
Last Friday, all three major stock markets hit new record highs ignoring the storm clouds on the horizon. In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said this reminds him of 1987.
The stock market is rising despite the fact that there are very, very negative factors that are building, that are hiding in plain sight, that everybody is ignoring.”
When it comes to the economy, most people aren’t worried about anything when there is everything to worry about.
The World Gold Council has released a report highlighting four market trends that will impact gold in the coming year. Although the WGC tends to embrace a pretty mainstream economic point of view, there is some good food for thought in the report, and some reason to be bullish on gold in 2018.
The WGC notes that gold performed remarkably well in 2017. Investors continued to add gold to their portfolios. It pointed to inflows of $8.2 billion worth of gold into gold-backed exchange- traded funds as one example of strong gold demand. In fact, gold outperformed many asset classes in 2018, despite a rising interest rate environment and surging stock markets.
We write a lot about India because people in the country love gold. Even the poor buy gold in India. Indians value gold as a store of wealth, especially in poor rural regions. Two-thirds of India’s gold demand comes from these areas, where the vast majority of people live outside the official tax system. Gold is one of the engines that make the Indian economy run.
India gets a lot of attention because it ranks as the world’s second-largest gold consumer, but it isn’t the only country with an affinity for the yellow metal. Gold has played a vital role in the history and economy of Vietnam, and still serves as an economic lifeline for the Vietnamese people today.
If you believe the conventional wisdom, gold should be languishing right now.
It isn’t. People are buying gold.
So, what gives? Could it be that the conventional wisdom is wrong?
Ding.
They say bells never ring when markets hit the top. But maybe they do and people just don’t listen.
Yesterday, Bloomberg reported China may slow or even stop its purchase of US Treasuries. In other words, a major source of US government debt financing may be pulling out. This comes at the same time the Federal Reserve has committed to shrinking its balance sheet.
In the weeks leading up to the December Federal Reserve rate hike, the price of gold fell and most mainstream analysts were bearish on the yellow metal. After all, rising interest rates are bad for gold. right? But we took a contrarian position, saying the negative relationship between rising interest rates and the price of gold is really more of a “sell the rumor, buy the fact” phenomenon.
As it turns out, we were right. In the weeks since the Federal Open Market Committee nudged the interest rate up another 25 basis points on Dec. 13, gold has outperformed most other major assets.
The US gold market went into a deficit last year despite sluggish American demand, according to analysis by SRSrocco.
