Insights

There is an aspect to gold’s role in our society which tends to receive much less attention: it is a critical component in many diagnostic test kits.

This week, we launched our February 2020 ETF flows report, which highlights the positive impact current market volatility is having on investment flows in gold-backed ETFs.

The US Federal Reserve (Fed) announced an emergency 50bp rate cut yesterday, bringing the Fed funds rate down to a 1-1.25% range, in response to ongoing concerns about the potential impact of the coronavirus outbreak to the global economy. Treasury bond rates followed suit, with the 10-year note hovering 1% at the time of writing – an all-time historical low

Today we’ve published our latest central bank gold data, which now includes buying and selling activity for January 2020.

The stock market embraced the weakest one-week performance since the financial crisis last week on the back of growing concerns of the continued spread of the coronavirus across the globe. Despite the risk off-moves, gold was lower by more than 3% last week, which is historically unusual during these types of movements. There are a few potential reasons for the weakness.

In this video, our Chief Market Strategist, John Reade, joins Chris Mellor, Head of EMEA Equity and Commodity Product Management at Invesco, to address questions raised by investors around the potential benefits of gold.

At the end of January, the new head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, announced the launch of a year-long strategic review of the bank’s monetary policy strategy. Stemming from this, there has been much discussion recently about the ECB’s existing “below but close to 2%” inflation target, and whether this needs to be made more specific, both in aim and measurement. 

The World Gold Council recently sent a small delegation to the Investing in African Mining Indaba 2020 conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

It’s been less than two months since the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID19) was first reported in China, and a recurring question we hear from investors is: ‘How might gold react to an epidemic like this?’

Watch today's Gold Demand Trends webinar, where we discussed the drivers of gold demand from Q4 and FY 2019.

 

Wedding and stable domestic gold price at ~Rs 37800/10gm helped demand in first half of December but demand tailed off after 15th December after the beginning of inauspicious period and rising gold price which jumped by 3.7% from mid-December till end of the month.

Gold prices rebounded in December, concluding 2019 as the best year for CNY-denominated gold in nine years.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are increasingly finding their way on the radar of internal and external stakeholders. ESG can be transformative for many industries, especially for those that have a significant direct impact on all three areas of ESG as the mining and metals sector does.

“It just doesn’t get any bigger than this”. At least that is how President Trump is portraying the signing of the “Phase One” deal with China last week. But while talks between the two nations are undoubtedly positive for global trade, do they really make a substantive change in circumstances?

On 25th January 2020, people throughout China will celebrate the start of a new year – the most important festival in the Chinese lunar calendar. This will kick off Year of the Rat and begin another rotation of the twelve zodiac signs. Most people are already in a festive mood, and, as a result, so is China’s gold market.

Gold has a special place in the Australian psyche. The gold rush of the early 1850s helped propel the country’s economy, stimulate its industries and grow its population. Australia is the world’s second largest gold producer and gold remains its third major commodity export. And over the last few years the Australian gold sector has flourished, with record mine production and record gold prices... But any sense of sectoral optimism is in danger of evaporating as the country struggles to cope with raging bushfires of unprecedented intensity and scale.