Regional Insights

In 2023, China’s wholesale gold demand improved and the PBoC’s gold reserves kept rising. Meanwhile, the local gold price premium saw a sizable increase.

We surveyed 1,000 people in the UK to learn about retirement planning and, importantly, if gold could play a greater role in UK pensions. The results point towards a clear growth opportunity for gold ownership in the pension space.

As we look forward to 2024, we explore three economic scenarios and their likely impact on gold. Historically, gold has had a flat performance during consensus-favoured ‘soft landings’; however, geopolitical risks, central bank buying and the spectre of a recession may provide additional support for gold.

With the rapid growth in funding ratios over the past two years, an increasing number of UK defined benefit (DB) pension schemes have been contemplating their investment approach for the endgame – the point at which a plan moves from being underfunded to being fully funded or even having a surplus.

This transition has a number of investment implications. In this paper, we examine how pension schemes can seek to maintain the ground they’ve gained over the recent past, as one of the driving forces behind the rise in interest rates and improved funding status – inflation – has become a source of asset price volatility.

Gold, in Australian dollars (AUD), delivered positive returns in 2022 and this has continued so far in 2023. It has attracted attention: not only have global central banks continued to buy gold, but Australia’s sovereign wealth fund has also added gold to its portfolio.

Gold is a precious metal that has been used in many sectors around the world, from ancient history to the present day. Demand for physical gold is ever increasing due to its attributes: it is a global currency and convertible everywhere, it is incapable of being spoiled, it is recyclable, does not corrode, and has high conductibility.