LAST year, 22 central banks, situated largely to the east of Germany, bought the largest amount of gold since 1967 - the year that the London Gold Pool collapsed. The gold repatriations by many European countries of the last few years are another sign that we are reaching the end of four decades of monetary calm. This could bring about the largest monetary changes since the closing of the gold... read more

Hedge fund kingpin Ray Dalio is seeing a case for gold as central banks get more aggressive with policies that devalue currencies and are about to cause a “paradigm shift” in investing. Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, wrote in a LinkedIn post that investors have been pushed into stocks and other assets that have equity-like returns. As a result, too many people are hold... read more

The reforms the U.S. adopted after the 2008 financial crisis were supposed to ensure that banks would be better prepared to bear losses on loans gone bad. So are they? In one important way, not so much. When banks make loans, they know that some of them never will be repaid. To be prepared, and to better reflect the true value of the loans on their books, they create allowances agains... read more

By this time next week we’ll be knee-deep in earnings from J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, Netflix, and a pile of other big names. Until then, at least for Friday, it could be possible to have fresh records for the big U.S. indexes as we continue to bask in the warm afterglow of a dovish Fed. Enter party-pooper Bank of America Merrill Lynch who warned clients Friday of an “overshoot” in cr... read more

LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin dipped almost 8% on Thursday, extending losses the day after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called for a halt to Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency project until concerns ranging from privacy to money-laundering were addressed. The original cryptocurrency initially fell 7.7% to $11,164 in early morning trade, following a 3.8% slide on Wednesday a... read more

Jeffrey Gundlach Sees Triple-Digit Upside in This Commodity This commodity has been soaring. Last year, I pounded the table about the benefits of investing in gold and gold mining stocks. The industry, I argued, represented a huge bargain and patient investors would soon be rewarded. That thesis has started to play out. Over the past year, gold prices have rallied 15%. That makes the commo... read more

US Federal Reserve said Friday in a report submitted to the US Senate that global and domestic economic uncertainties had increased in recent months, and that the central bank will "act as appropriate" to sustain economic expansion. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is due next Wednesday and Thursday to testify on the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report before the Senate Committee on Banking, Hou... read more

- Initial weekly U.S. jobless claims fell by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 221,000 in the week to Saturday, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The data was relatively in line with expectations. Consensus expectations compiled by various news organizations had called for initial claims to be around 220,000. The government revised the prior week's numbers of 227,000 claims up by 2,000,... read more

Gold prices rose on Tuesday, after its biggest one-day percentage fall in 2-1/2 years the previous session, as risk appetite soured on worries over global growth and uncertainties around a Sino-U.S. trade deal. Spot gold was up 0.55% at $1,391.53 per ounce, after falling 1.8% on Monday, its biggest one-day percentage decline since November 2016. U.S. gold futures were up 0.35% at $1,394.2 an o... read more

June was a good month for gold, which made for a strong first-half of the year for the precious metal. The price of gold GCQ19, -1.20% rose 10% from $1,280.30 per ounce at the end of 2018 to $1,409.00 at the end of last week. Gold jumped 9% in June (Fig. 1). It finished the month at its second-highest level since May 2013, but still 26% below its record high of $1,895.00 in September 2011.... read more