Price of Gold in 2018: Can It Keep Moving Higher?

Gold Silver Reports – Price of Gold in 2018: Can It Keep Moving Higher? — Gold continued to gain ground in 2017, picking up about 12% and extending its streak of winning performances.

Price of Gold in 2018

Yet many investors weren’t pleased at how the yellow metal didn’t manage to outpace the returns of the stock market. With gold prices closing the year around $1,300 per ounce, some might be surprised to discover that many professionals anticipate weaker gains for gold in 2018 than they saw last year. Let’s take a closer look at what’s in store for the precious metal in the coming year.

Where is gold headed in 2018?

Gold is facing a great deal of uncertainty right now. Many of the difficult conditions that analysts expected in 2017 didn’t come to pass, as rising short-term interest rates didn’t lead to a big jump in longer-term bond yields. That in turn kept financing costs relatively low for gold investors, and that helped to avoid a hit to prices. Moreover, rising geopolitical uncertainty kept the gold market on its toes, especially in light of Trump administration comments about North Korea and the Middle East.

One reason why rising rates didn’t hurt gold very much is that they were largely restricted to the U.S. market. Across the globe, most central banks remained extremely loose on monetary policy during 2017, and that helped to support greater foreign investment among international players in the gold market. The falling U.S. dollar in relation to other major currencies like the euro and British pound also helped support gold, whose price is generally denominated in dollars.

A wide range of predictions shows how different opinions are among those following the gold market. Although some expect better prices ahead, others think that conditions are ripe for a possible pullback. Few see particularly dramatic shifts in either direction, although that’s fairly typical for analysts taking stands on precious metals markets with annual projections.