December Gold News 2019

Ecuador’s central bank, Banco Central del Ecuador, has announced that it has recently added to the nation’s gold reserves as part of the state’s holdings, taking its total holdings up to $1 billion.

The process has been going on since 2016 and will run until 2026 as part of state loan repayments to the central bank from the Ministry of Finance, with the bank pushing to diversify its holdings to better protect Ecuador against financial crisis.

Just four days after rallying on the back of the general election, the pound has rebounded today, wiping off almost all the gains it had made. News broke last night that the government are bringing in an amendment which will outlaw any further delays to Brexit, weakening the pound, and pushing the gold price up.

Pound Sterling rallied last night as the Conservatives secured their election victory, and decimated opposition parties in the general election. The gold price dropped to a near six-month low of £1,085 per ounce last night as a result of the strengthening pound.

Will Boris Johnson now be able to 'Get Brexit Done'? Or is a no-deal Brexit risk growing once more?

Election day is here, and with it the Pound Sterling hit an eight-month high of $1.3228 against the US Dollar this morning as the latest polling points to a narrow Conservative majority. Polling is unpredictable however, and the Pound has since fallen back slightly to $1.316, while being at €1.182 against the Euro.

The former US Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker, has died at the age of 92. Volcker is infamous for advocating the abandonment of the gold standard, as well as his introduction of extreme fiscal policies in an attempt to turn around America’s spiralling inflation of the 1970s.

Pound Sterling has climbed to a seven-month high against the US Dollar this week, as markets become more confident of a Conservative victory in the upcoming General Election. The Pound is now at its highest since May 2019, hitting a high of $1.314 this morning – a gain of 2.29% in just a week.

One of Britain’s largest funds has been forced to suspend dealing due to problems with liquidity, risking billions of investor funds and potentially similar losses to the Woodford Fund failure from earlier this year.

Figures from the BEGOS rankings of commodities show that, for 2019, gold has been the third-best performing asset – behind the S&P 500 stock market and oil.

Last year – specifically in Dollar terms – the price of gold actually declined year-on-year; down 1.7% versus 2017. This year, gold has gained over 14.5% in Dollars, rising to record-breaking prices in other currencies.

Only a year since the record-breaking Douglas nugget was revealed to have been found in a Scottish river, another prospector has found an even larger specimen hidden on a riverbed, making this one Britain's largest ever gold nugget discovered.

New figures published today by the Institute for Supply Management report that the manufacturing index for November has fallen to 48.1 points; down from 48.3 in October and a fourth consecutive month of sector contraction.

Contradictory data – this time from IHS Markit - showed a rise in the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) from 51.3 points to 52.6.