Gold

Swiss scientists say that $3.4 million worth of gold and silver end up in the nation’s waste treatment plants annually.
According to scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) about 43 kilograms of gold and three tonnes of silver pass through the nation’s wastewater treatment plant every year. With gold prices hovering just below $1,300 and silver above $17 an ounce, that waste is worth around $3.4 million annually – in other words that is expensive poop.

A new tool to provide a complete information to get into the market of diamonds and gold.

Typically, there is an inverse correlation between the value of the dollar and that of gold. When the dollar loses purchasing power, then the value of other currencies increases and so the demand for commodities. The investors look for alternatives to protect value: gold, a typical safe haven, is a preferred choice.

Not always the inverse relationship is true. There have been times when both assets have risen or fallen together. Many factors drive the U.S. dollar’s trends, like monetary policy, U.S. inflation, economic prospects. Nevertheless, the correlation coefficient calculated between the returns of the U.S. Dollar Index and the price of gold sticks, most of the times, around negative values.

What factors would determine the future performance of gold prices?

I suppose that it is all about the outlook for the trend of interest rates in the United States. By that I mean the Treasury Inflation Protected Securities yield and the federal funds rate. In my opinion, these would be the factors that will drive the price of gold. At this point in time, our view is that the fed fund rate will be moving higher, thus, we are not anticipating much more strength in gold prices, not much beyond the $1,300 to $1,350.

Investors currently face great difficulty in trying to limit risk while desperately searching for higher yields. ZIRP and NIRP have made bonds uninteresting even as central banks continue buying up what is available on the market with the result that yields are kept artificially low. Central bank acquisitions on the stock market have pushed equity prices so high that new records have been set. David Stockman is correct in asserting that price discovery has been eliminated.

This Newsletter has predicted a stock market correction at the least if not a crash in the near future and favors gold as an investment. What has happened is that the FAANG stocks continue to ride high while the rest of the market generally limps along. The gold price suffers a setback every time it strikes northwards. If that was not enough to make one suspicious, inflation remains low despite huge injections of capital into the economy.

The price of gold fell to a multiweek low on Monday after a trader made a grave mistake. Spot gold fell around 1% Monday morning to trade as low as $1,236.46, which marks the lowest level the commodity has seen since May 17, Bloomberg reported. U.S. gold futures also lost nearly 1 percent to trade at $1,245.40 an ounce.

The decline in gold is attributed to a large market order of 18,500 lots of gold, which represents 1.85 million ounces. This was likely a mistake, or a "fat finger" trade, as the order is bigger than anything seen at the peak of domestic political turmoil and the surprising outcome from the Brexit vote.

The forecasts by the World Gold Council, in the Metals Focus Database of Mines, suggest irreversible trends: extracting gold, just like extracting diamonds, will be increasingly costly and difficult.