Gold was one of the first currencies in history, one of the first luxury items fawned over that later became the standard that most government issued currencies were equated to. Today it is in most consumer and industrial electronics, in astronaut’s visors and as decoration on overpriced edibles.

 

Just like anything else that has intrinsic value, Gold is also available to people seeking to trade it and honestly that’s probably why you are on this blog, reading this article. First off let’s see what can effect gold’s price.

 

Factors Influencing Gold and Precious Metal Trading

As a general rule of thumb, when gold is up, markets are down. Several different factors come into play when analyzing the movement of the Gold price:

  • Market Volatility – Gold has often been used as a safe haven investment when markets are unpredictable.
  • Inflation and deflation – this is because there exists a perception that an increase of rates will drive investors away from gold to government bonds.
  • Supply – can be affected by decline in yields, political instability and the discovery of new seams.
  • Demand – mainly due to jewelry and the electronics industry.

 

Why Trade Gold?

High liquidity. The gold market is incredibly large. Not only is it relatively affordable to trade in gold, there are large amounts of it available and the market is not usually swayed by large trades; it’s a global market that has quite a bit of stability. You can trade gold as a commodity and most reputable brokers offer it.

 

Intrinsic value. It is considered to be one of the best types of trading because it has inherent value; there is a finite amount of gold in the world and there is no way to create new gold. Thus, it will continue to become more valuable with time, often either keeping pace with or outperforming inflation even if there are other issues impacting the global economy. Unlike some other commodities, gold will never be worthless; apart from its value as a precious metal, it’s also used in many engineering and scientific fields.

 

Historical knowledge. Gold can be seen as fairly predictable due to the large amounts of historical knowledge and analysis that we have regarding its activity. As an example, gold has a tendency to increase in value every time the global economy struggles; traders can use this knowledge to plan their trades ahead.

 

Tips and tricks. Anywhere you go in the investor’s world, you can get advice and tips about gold. Of course, the problem there becomes stripping out the experienced, valuable knowledge from the inexperienced guess work, but the advantage remains: you can learn quite a lot about gold in a fairly small amount of time. The investment community publishes a wealth of information and gold analysis, there are tips around every corner, and there are services such as trading signals that specialize in the gold market. All of this creates a market that has a spectacularly low barrier of entry compared to more obscured commodity trading.

 

Fun facts about Gold:

  • The word “gold” comes from the Old English word “geolu,” meaning yellow.
  • It is believed that around 80% of earth’s gold is still buried underground
  • There is an estimated total of 10 billion tons of gold in the world’s oceans. That is 25 tons of gold for every cubic mile of seawater.
  • Two thirds of the world’s gold come from South Africa.
  • India is the world’s largest consumer of gold today.
  • Gold is edible.
  • The world’s largest gold bar weighs 250 kg (551 lb)

 

Article written by: Galatia Dodou

 



 

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