The price of gold whipsawed this week, driven up and down by various headlines. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey covers some of the big news that moved the markets. But he said that we need to keep our eyes on the big picture. All of this is happening in front of a backdrop of surging debt driven by central bank policy. How much do we owe and what does it mean for the future? Mike talks about it.
As Bloomberg put it, Russia’s bet on gold looks better every month.
The Russian Central Bank’s gold reserves have topped $100 billion thanks to continued buying and surging prices.
Gold has been on a three-day skid, but as Fox Business anchor Liz Claman put it, “So what? It’s been a breakout summer for bullion.”
Over the last three months, gold is up about 12% and has hit six-and-a-half year highs in recent weeks.
Peter Schiff joined Claman, along with, Frank Holmes and Imaru Cassanova on The Claman Countdown to talk about the yellow metal.
China added another 5.91 tons of gold to its reserves in August, bringing its total official gold purchases on the year to almost 100 tons, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China over the weekend.
It was the ninth straight month of gold purchases for China as it continues efforts to diversify reserves away from the US dollar.
Did you know that Snopes has fact-checked the Babylon Bee on multiple occasions? True story. In the obsession to root out “fake news,” fact-checking sites have resorted to fact-checking satire and parody articles.
Here we go again!
Gold and silver both took a tumble yesterday because US and Chinese officials are reportedly going to have a meeting. Hope that this might mean a thaw in the trade war boosted risk sentiment and drove profit-taking in the precious metals markets.
We’ve seen this song and dance before. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about it. He also points out some very interesting Federal Reserve news that nobody in the mainstream has even mentioned.
During a CNBC interview, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said gold prices are surging because investors are looking for hard assets that they know will have value in 20 or 30 years.
Gold-backed ETFs added another 122 tons of gold globally in August and total holdings are nearing all-time highs.
Total ETF gold holdings have reached 2, 733 tons. That’s just 52 tons away from the all-time high reached in 2012 when the price of gold was 9% higher, according to the most recent data released by the World Gold Council.
US manufacturing activity contracted in August, according to the latest data.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) PMI index for August came in at 49.1. Any number under 50 signals a drop in manufacturing. This was the first contraction in three years and the first time the index has dropped below 50 since August 2016. August marked the fifth straight monthly decline.
Meanwhile, IHS Markit PMI hit 50.3, the lowest number since September 2009 – in the aftermath of 2008 crash.
Central banks continue to gobble up gold. Globally, the world’s central banks added another net 13.9 tons of gold to their reserves in July.
While this was the lowest net increase in global central bank reserves since August 2017, the number was skewed downward by a significant gold sell-off by Uzbekistan. Gross purchases by the world’s central banks came in at 36.4 tons, according to the latest data released by the World Gold Council.
