The amount of political and economic crises keeps on growing in the world but gold is still going down in value. International experts have been trying to figure out the reasons why contemporary investors are investing in other assets instead of gold as it used to be ages. It's interesting to note that they are mostly investing in dollar assets.
Previously, investors used to load up on gold during various crises. Gold helped them to survive even the biggest crises out there. With that being said, gold has always been treated as safe-have asset, at least up until recently. The current situation varies significantly from all the precedents. The experts and observers say that today's world presents a lot of risks for the global financial system, including the trade ware between the United States and China, Brexit, the devaluation of the Turkish national currency, the tensions around Iran's nuclear program, internal political and debt issues in Italy, tougher Western sanctions against Russia and Iran, and of course, the likelihood of Trump's impeachment. Strangely enough, despite all of that, gold has been going down in value since April 2018.
According to NordFX's analytic center, April's gold prices reached the 12-month high at $1365/oz. After peaking at this price, gold started its downtrend. By mid August, the price had already dropped all the way down to $1170/oz, which is still the lowest price since January 2017. All in all, gold depreciated by 15% over the first 4 months of the downtrend.
Having analyzed the futures market, international experts say that never in the history of the international gold market have professionals gone bearish for gold. It seems that gold, which has always been a anti-crisis asset, has now been found knee-deep in crisis itself.
U.S. Dollar Attacks
International experts say there is a whole lot of possible reasons for the current situation in the gold market. Some of them say the key reasons boils down to the fact that the Indian market, which is one of the most crucial markets for gold, has seen a major decrease in demand. Others say that more and more investors start seeing tech stocks like Google and Apple as next-gen safe-haven assets. Yet another group assumes that the market has been afraid of a major gold sellout by the Central Bank of Turkey, which is why international investors have been reducing their exposure to gold.
However, most experts share the same opinion that the strengthening of the U.S. Dollar is yet another major reason why gold has been weak over the last couple of months. The thing is that more often than not, the financial assets are usually traded for dollars. Since, the AMerican currency is negatively correlated with those assets for obvious reasons, any strengthening of the U.S. Dollar means weakness for those assets, which is something we can see now in the market of gold. The thing is, when the U.S. Dollar gets stronger, this makes gold purchases more expensive, and that's why international buyers have to suspend their gold purchases for a while. By the way, the same holds true for another popular commodity assets, which is crude oil.
While the Fed keeps on toughening their monetary policies, T-bond yields are rising, thus making T-bond investments more attractive. Some experts belive that the American currency is probably going to continue strengthening, which means gold is destined to see the flight of capital for more profitable assets like U.S. T-bonds.
