2016 – What the New Year Holds for Gold

Gold bulls have suffered years of disappointment, having seen their favorite metal’s price lose more than 40 percent from its all-time historic high of $1,924 an ounce in early September 2011.
Last year alone the price of gold fell some 10 percent, leaving many investors, analysts, and financial-market pundits despondent about the prospects for gold in this New Year.
What surprised us more than anything was the failure of extreme monetary stimulus from the U. S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks around the world to trigger and support a bull market in gold. Common sense suggests that the unprecedented creation of new money ‘out of thin air,’ so to speak, would lead to massive inflation and devaluation of the dollar’s purchasing power.
But contrary to expectations, consumer prices have been worrisomely stable while producer and commodity prices have actually declined. Instead of inflation fears, economists and policy-makers are now worried about price deflation and slowing economic activity around the world.
Looking back over the past few years, we can see all this new money has fueled another form of inflation – not consumer-price inflation, but an inflation of equity prices on Wall Street and other major stock markets along with rising prices for real estate, fine art, antiques, rate coins, and other esoteric assets.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 7 January 2016.