SWOT Analysis: Why Exploration Budgets Are On the Rise

Jon Economy, Fiscal Policies, Gold, Market Commentary, Precious Metals

Strengths
The best performing precious metal for the week was palladium, up 4.22 percent on improving expectations for the automotive industry where palladium is principally used to clean gasoline emissions. According to ZeroHedge, a new trend is gaining popularity in China – digital gold ‘gifting.’ Tencent’s digital gold packets, known as microgold, are backed by the country’s biggest bank and allow users to send funds that track the real-time value of gold over the WeChat platform. An ICBC document shows that during the Lunar New Year, WeChat users sent 70,000 microgold packets across the platform worth $14.5 million. Gold ETFs recorded inflows over the past two days totaling nearly 9 tons, reports Commerzbank, reversing more than half of outflows previously seen this month. Noting a drop in net long positions to their lowest level since the beginning of the year during the run-up to the Fed meeting, one analyst wrote that this means there is ample upside potential for gold. As seen in the chart below, we are seeing the longest losing run for the dollar since November, reports Bloomberg, as gold advanced to its highest level in three weeks on haven demand amid a global selloff in stocks.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 27 March 2017.