The World Gold Council has announced plans to form a committee that will help set up India’s first physical gold exchange. Officials say they hope to have the exchange up and running in 12 to 18 months.
The committee will not actually set up the exchange, but will provide guidance. WGC Indian operations managing director PR Somasundaram told Bloomberg the council is in the process of creating an industry committee of jewelry trade associations, dealers, miners, regulators, foreign and Indian banks, and eventually some consumers.
After surging in August, gold continued to flow into ETFs last month, signaling continued strong demand for the yellow metal – specifically in North America.
According to the World Gold Council, gold-backed ETF holdings increased by 22.4 tons in September. This follows on the heels of a 31.4 ton increase in August.
What happens when government officials spend with virtually no restraint and they don’t have a printing press that can crank out more money?
Hartford, Connecticut.
Last week, both S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Hartford’s credit rating deeper into junk status. According to a Reuters report, the downgrade puts Hartford near the bottom of the credit scale. This means the agencies view the city as essentially in default with little prospect for a full bondholder recovery.
Conventional wisdom holds that gold is a good store of value, and provides a hedge of protection against inflation and economic upheaval. But a close look at the data reveals gold offers a long-term growth trajectory comparable to other financial asset classes.
Gold sales at Australia’s Perth Mint doubled in September. Meanwhile, sales of silver surged 78%.
Sales of gold coins and minted bars jumped to 46,415 ounces in September, up from 23,130 ounces a month ago. Silver sales during the month came in at 697,849 ounces, compared with 392,091 ounces in August.
Indians love gold. Despite rising prices, a tax increase, and government attempts to tighten regulation of the jewelry industry, gold imports into the country nearly tripled year-on-year in August. India ranks as the second largest gold consuming country in the world, trailing only China. But gold isn’t the only precious metal Indians covet. They also buy a lot of silver.
According to a new report by the Silver Institute, India consumed 160.6 million ounces of silver in 2016, accounting for 16% of global silver demand.
When we reported on the Toys R Us bankruptcy, we argued that it wasn’t just about shifting shopping patterns away from brick and mortar to online companies. A recent article on TechCo complaining that millennials are broke backs up our assertion.
Remember back when mortgage lenders loosened credit standards making it easier to get a loan and blew up a giant housing bubble?
That’s happening again.
According to a report released by Fannie Mae, lenders facing lower profit margins are trying to expand the borrower pool.
Facing constrained mortgage demand and a negative profit margin outlook, more lenders say they have eased rather than tightened home mortgage credit standards, according to Fannie Mae’s third quarter 2017 Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey. Across all loan types – GSE Eligible, Non-GSE Eligible, and Government – the net share of lenders who reported easing credit standards over the prior three months reached a new high since the survey’s inception in March 2014, after climbing each quarter since Q4 2016.”
Obamacare repeal 3.0 went down in flames Tuesday. According to Bloomberg, opposition from three Republican Senators derailed the latest attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
Leaders decided the Senate won’t vote before Saturday’s deadline to use a fast-track procedure to keep Democrats from blocking a GOP-only bill. On Monday, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine added her opposition to that of GOP Senators John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky, enough to sink the legislation in the 52-48 Senate.”
This raises broader questions: Can Republicans get anything done? Is there any chance of Trump pushing through his ambitious economic agenda?
During an interview at the Denver Gold Forum, the chairman of the World Gold Council said he thinks the world may have reached peak gold.
Peak gold means the amount of gold mined out of the earth will begin to shrink every year, rather than increase, as it has done pretty consistently since the 1970s.
Randall Oliphant said there are signs we’ve reached that point. He said in the near-term, production is likely to plateau at best, before slowly declining as demand rises, especially given global political risks and robust purchases by consumers in India and China
We’re not going to fall off a cliff in the near term, but in the same time it’s really hard to see how we’re going to produce enough gold to meet all this demand.”
