After the record gold price highs in August and then a substantial, although not unexpected, correction, we've been very busy at the World Gold Council fielding a wide range of questions, many of them seeking an explanation for those price movements. And, talking to reporters across the world, I've again been struck by how so many questions are extremely short-term in nature.
While the COVID-19 crisis is very different from the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis that followed, I remember pondering then whether long-termism and strategic thinking (among investment professionals and market commentators) are victims of such major systemic crises. Does the severity and scale of the immediate challenges, and the understandable desire to return to Business-As-Usual as soon as possible, blinker investors (and journalists) from looking further forward? And do these crises prevent market participants from looking beyond the immediate market debris and gloom to identify enduring solutions and consider, in practical terms, how to build future resilience?