Alternative Outlook

On the back of a pretty uninteresting year for the gold market, financial institutions have been busy looking at what happened in the market and putting together their predictions for the year ahead. This article includes some interesting opinions from Thomson Reuters GFMS who are one of the main commentators on the gold market.
2012 Overview
2012 saw some volatile periods for the gold market but overall the price stayed in a bracket between $1,540 and $1,800 per ounce, finishing the year only marginally higher than it started. Gold did not a…

Gold has been coveted for millennia because of its beauty, rarity and virtual indestructibility. In the current economic climate gold continues to have merit as a store of wealth. Gold as an investment has grown in popularity in recent years, partly because of the risks posed to our modern global financial and economic systems – it is often seen as a safe-haven in times of crisis. The price of gold bullion fluctuated between $1,500 and $1,800 during 2012.

In the shorter term, economic growth has remained constricted, and deflation is just …

Commodity shares are likely to have caught the attention of contrarian investors. Despite positive developments – including gas discoveries in the US, renewed consumption in China and a gold price bounce – many resources-related stocks and funds fared poorly last year.

We explain how to get exposure to gold, mining and energy.

Energy
Pau Morilla-Giner, commodities specialist at asset manager London & Capital, said the main beneficiaries of the shale gas discoveries in the US would be the water and was…

Gold enthusiasts were today bouyed today by the decision of Germany’s central bank to pull its gold reserves out of Paris and New York.

It follows warnings from the country’s Court of Auditors that bullion held abroad had “never been verified physically” and was not under proper control.The Bundesbank is to recall its reserves as leverage against future currency fluctuations, resulting in pulling a chunk of its holdings from New York and all its bullion from Paris.The price of gold per ounce rose $14.50 to $1,682.60 by mid…

The FTSE 100 — the index of Britain’s biggest companies — shot past the 6,000 mark last week and hit its highest level for 23 months.

Analysts such as Jonathan Jackson, of stockbroker Killik & Co, expect it to reach 6,500 by next Christmas. But a breakout year is far from certain.

John Higgins, senior markets economist at consultancy Capital Economics, expects the FTSE to dive back towards 5,000 if the debt crisis in Europe erupts again.
Boom: The price of gold went from $300 an ounce in 2001 to $1,920 in September 2…

Demand for gold has continued to grow in 2012 and is predicted to increase further next year.

Research by Source, a provider of exchange traded products, shows that inflows into European gold ETPs have reached $6.8bn this year to date, constituting a staggering 15.4pc growth.

ETPs are funds that are traded on a stock exchange like shares. They are a pooled investment fund, where an individual can gain exposure to a particular indices or commodity, providing the investor with the same returns as the underl…

Since 2000, gold has outperformed the S&P 500 each year nine of 12 times. How does gold behave like an investment and what are the fundamentals of investing in gold? What are the different ways investors can get exposure to gold in their portfolios?

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GLOBAL gold demand may be on the decline – down 11 per cent, or 138.9 tonnes from the third quarter of 2011. But it has had a series of highs since the economic downturn.

Gold is the classic “store of value”. It’s traditionally seen as a safe haven in troubled times, providing a hedge against inflation and the debasement of currencies. Today, continued and unpredictable inflation may mean investors should consider holding gold to diversify away from the diminishing purchasing power of traditional currencies. The money supply is conti…

Global gold demand in Q3 2012 was 1,084.6 tonnes (t), down 11% from the record Q3 2011 figure of 1,223.5t.   This dip in demand is in comparison with exceptional demand in Q3 last year. Gold demand remains resilient. Q3 2012 was above the five year quarterly average of 984.7t, according to the World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends Report.

In value terms gold demand was 14.0% lower year on year at $57.6bn and the average gold price of $1,652/oz was down 3% on the record average Q3 2011 price.

The key findings from the report are …

Gold has long been seen as “real money”. It is seen as a stable store of value, and today, it is seen a “must have” alternative investment for any diversified portfolio. Indeed, gold’s popularity is demonstrated by the fact that the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) has already gathered approximately US$75 billion of assets.

We believe, however, that those looking for “hard asset” alternative investments are making a mistake by limiting themselves to gold alone, and would be well served by also considering such assets as agricultural land and for…