Supply & Demand

China increased its central bank gold reserves in March by the smallest amount since the country started releasing the data on a monthly basis last year.

China’s central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said the government will make efforts to expand the use of the International Monetary Fund’s basket of reserve currencies in its domestic economy.

Since February, the gold market has been in short-squeeze mode. This is a process by which excessive speculation on the declining gold price is being eliminated. The more the price goes up, the more of those speculators are forced to buy back their short positions.

BlackRock's Gold ETF (IAU) has seen fund inflows every day in 2016 (no outflows at all) and with the stock trading above its NAV for most of the year, the world's largest asset manager has made a significant decision: *BLACKROCK SAYS ISSUANCE OF GOLD TRUST SHARES SUSPENDED *BLACKROCK SAYS SUS...

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are to be watched closely as it concerns official gold reserves in 2016. Pressure has been mounting recently on Saudi Arabia to de-link the riyal from the US dollar and, if it happens, I am sure it will be positive for gold.

Gold's rise in foreign currencies since the year 2000 - by majors & by region

Most investors had been hoping that the investment Shangri-La would continue for another year? Little do they realise that current values in no way reflects real values or risk. As we know, markets can remain irrational for a very long time.

So the reason for me to buy gold but also silver in 2016 remains the same as last year and that is as money in extremis.

Impressive moves up in the gold price in the major gold producing nations.

“Gold is like a canary in the coal mine. It signals problems with respect to currency markets”. It doesn’t signal problems just with the US dollar but with the whole international monetary system based on fiat.