After nearing a five-month high on this month’s first Friday, gold analysts are optimistic that this positive momentum will be carried through to next week as markets scour for hints as to the Federal Reserve’s future monetary policy outlook. Gold prices had a great trading week, closing in the green on Friday after touching the highest level of $1,254.30 an ounce for the first time since July 17. The February Comex gold futures were last trading at $1,254.20, up 0.85% on the day.
Looking at the positive trading action in the most recent gold investment news, analysts had hoped that gold’s price gains stick around the following week (and it did).
Ryan McKay, TD Securities Commodity Strategist, Kitco Interview, December 7, 2018
Watching The Fed Speak
Aside from the U.S. dollar and equities, McKay also highlighted the chatter around the future of Fed rate hikes as the top drivers of gold in the following week. McKay pointed to The Wall Street Journal’s report from Thursday of that week, which stated that central bank officials may revert to a “wait-and-see” approach after proceeding with another rate increase this month.
Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2018
When projecting prices for next week, London Capital Group (LCG) head of research Jasper Lawler told Kitco News that it was “for once a happy call to make.”
Jasper Lawler, LCG Head of Research
In the following week, markets as mentioned in gold investment news reports continued digesting the soft U.S. employment figures, which showed that the economy only added 155,000 new positions versus the expected 200,000, LCG’s head of research added, as predicted. Overall, however, the November data are unlikely to impact the Fed’s outlook on the U.S. economy, Capital Economics U.S. economist Andrew Hunter pointed out.
Andrew Hunter, Capital Economics
Hunter said on Friday. Hunter is currently pricing in a December hike and then two more rate hikes next year in March and June.
Which is it for equities? Is it a multi-year slump and recession-short, sharp correction?
That’s Part One of the question for gold investing at the start of 2018. Because as ever, the price of gold is all about what happens to other investments. The metal itself won’t change. Hell, the stuff does so little, it won’t even rust. So to judge how much gold you need this year (or how little), you need instead to ask:
- Will global stock markets in 2018 stop going up?
- If so, how big will that drop prove?
- How will central banks respond?
- Park any risks from geopolitics, mining supply or Asian consumer demand for the time being.
The only sure thing in the last few days of 2018 in Gold investment news is that the equity bull market will become the longest in US history if it continues on to the end of the year. So if a lull in equities before January 2019 turns into a slump, into a crash or into an all-out bear market, will the Fed blink or find religion and finally repent of their sins (I personally hope the latter)?
Because the only thing that really counts for 2018 gold investing, alongside the outlook for equities, is what central banks do.
Tighter policy than pundits and traders expect should, all things equal, put a dent in any gold bull market. Looser policy than people forecast, in contrast, will only make gold more appealing. This year’s rally so far says weaker policy might be coming. The fact that gold is rallying alongside fresh all-time stock market highs says that at least a few money managers are buying bullion as a precaution ahead of the equity drop everyone sees coming.
Recent Gold Investment News: How Should I Approach My Gold IRA Now?
Gold investors have taken it on the chin in recent years, as the price of the yellow metal has fallen dramatically from its 2011 highs. Yet for those who believe that stocks are overdue for a big move downward, investing in gold still seems like a smart move.
Many investors would prefer to invest in gold through a tax-favored IRA but don’t know how they can do so. Below, you’ll learn three ways to have the gold IRA you want with exactly the type of exposure to the yellow metal that matches up with your investing strategy.
1. Investing in Physical Gold as Outlined by Recent Gold investment News
IRA’s generally are designed to hold financial assets, with a blanket prohibition against owning most types of collectibles. If an IRA invests in a collectible, the amount spent is treated as a distribution of IRA assets in that amount, with the resulting taxes and penalties that occur whenever a distribution occurs even if the IRA legally holds title to the collectible good.
However, the IRS has an exception for gold and other types of precious-metals bullion.
In particular, the exception falls into two categories:
- First, bullion coins that are issued by the U.S., including gold American Eagle coins, or by individual states in the U.S. are not treated as collectibles and therefore eligible for holding within an IRA.
- In addition, other types of gold bullion are also allowed within an IRA if the quality of the metal meets or exceeds the minimum levels of purity required by futures market regulators and if a qualified trustee manages the IRA and physically holds the bullion. (More on Gold Gold Coins and Bullion – See Page: IRA-Approved Gold)
That last point is the key to investing in physical gold in an IRA. Most financial institutions that manage IRA’s don’t want to deal with the hassle of gold bullion, so they won’t allow you to invest in physical gold. You might have to go beyond your regular institution to find one that will let you have a gold IRA that owns gold coins or bars (See our List of Top 10 Gold IRA Companies).
2. Following the Route Outlined by Recent Gold ETF Investment News
In order to avoid the hassle of dealing with specialty gold IRA trustees, some investors have simply turned to substitutes for gold bullion that offer similar performance without actually involving physical ownership. Exchange-traded funds like SPDR Gold (NYSEMKT:GLD) and iShares Gold (NYSEMKT:IAU) offer shares to their investors, and each share matches up to a certain amount of gold in the ETF’s possession. The prices of these ETF’s have done a good job of tracking the price of gold over the long run.
3. Gold Stocks Investing News: Go for the Best Gold-Mining Companies
Finally, some investors prefer to invest in the companies that mine gold rather than in gold bullion itself. Either by picking mining companies directly or by using an ETF like the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSEMKT:GDX), you can put together a portfolio of companies with gold-mining assets that can thrive when the gold market is healthy.
The risk with gold-mining stocks is that other factors also play a part in the value of a given company’s shares. For instance, a mining accident or other site-specific issue can send a company’s stock plunging even when gold is performing well.
A Gold IRA can let you benefit when the gold market performs well without some of the tax hassles involved in owning bullion or gold-related stocks outside a retirement account. By knowing the rules, you can make sure that your gold IRA will give you the results you want without any unexpected problems along the way.
Gold Buying Sets a Pattern
Adrian Ash, BullionVault
With the metal in November reaching its highest monthly price since the summer, private investors as a group chose to buy gold on a rising price for a second month running – the first such run since New Year 2017.
That took BullionVault clients’ gold holdings up by 128 kilograms to a new record of 39.2 tonnes, worth $1.5 billion (£1.2bn, €1.3bn, ¥174bn) and securely stored in each customer’s choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or – most popular – Zurich.
But counted by number of buyers, not weight, gold demand fell in November as prices rose. Most notably, the number of new first-time gold investors dropped to its lowest monthly total since June, retreating 31.2% from October’s spike as global stock markets rallied from their worst plunge since 2012.
Together that sent the Gold Investor Index as written in Gold investment news to a 6-month low of 53.4 from 53.8 in October. Based solely on actual trading decisions made by users of BullionVault.com and its smartphone trading apps – the largest single pool of Western private investors in physical precious metals – the Gold Investor Index would read 50.0 if there were a perfect balance between the number of buyers and sellers across the month.
Let’s Recap: This July the index hit 56.8, its highest level since Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, as BullionVault’s gold market saw the fewest sellers in almost 10 years. The index bottomed at 50.5 in December 2014 as the number of gold buyers slumped by one-third from more typical levels. It recorded that same figure again the next month, January 2015, as the number of sellers leapt on a rally in prices from what were then multi-year lows.
Here in 2018, gold prices averaged $1220 per ounce across November as written in gold investment news headlines, a 4-month high in US Dollar terms, and the metal rose to a 5-month high in both Sterling and Euro terms at £946 and €1074. That rise in gold prices saw the number of buyers on BullionVault shrink to a 7-month low, down 17.5% from October.
The number of sellers fell harder however, dropping 25.8% from October’s surge to a 5-month high and marking the first time since September 2017 that the number of gold sellers didn’t rise in response to a rising price.
So on one side, it’s little wonder gold has failed to gather much new interest in 2018. Gold prices have held flat at best this year for Western investors, while interest rates turned higher and major Western stock markets recorded or neared new all-time highs before this autumn’s plunge.
But on the other side, gold’s performance as shown by recent gold investment news headlines has in fact been solid in 2018 given the lack of investor interest and the wider financial backdrop.
2019’s worsening political outlook is likely to support gold prices by continuing to deter sales from existing holders. They’ll want to keep spreading their risk, using to gold to insure against shocks to equities and the property market.
In contrast to gold, silver prices fell in November, reversing two-thirds of October’s monthly gain to average $14.37 per ounce and head for a 14.8% drop across 2018 as a whole. Yet silver trading on BullionVault saw the same pattern as gold, with the number of sellers falling harder than the number of buyers. That nudged the Silver Investor Index higher from 52.2 to 52.4, in line with the sentiment measure’s 12-month average. Silver investing by weight totalled 3.5 tonnes net of client selling, taking BullionVault users’ total holdings up to a fresh record above 748 tonnes.
Conclusion
Most people use the RMD table above, but there’s a situation in which you’ll need to use a different table. Those who have a spouse who’s more than 10 years younger than they are have to use a separate joint life and last survivor expectancy table, which you can find as Table II in this IRS publication. You’ll need to know both your age and your spouse’s age to get the appropriate factor, but once you have it, the calculation method remains the same.
Roth IRA’s don’t require withdrawals regardless of your age, giving you more flexibility to manage your retirement savings as you see fit. Traditional IRA’s make up a huge part of the retirement savings that Americans have accumulated, and it’s important to know what the IRS requires you to do with those accounts once you actually reach your golden years. By knowing about the IRA RMD table and how to use it, you won’t mistakenly run afoul of the provisions and get yourself into trouble with the IRS.
If you’re like most Americans, you’re a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known “Social Security secrets” could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $16,146 more each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we’re all after.
An Individual Retirement Account (or Individual Retirement Arrangement, as the IRS technically calls them) is a great way to save for retirement. You can get tax breaks as encouraged by the gold investing news reports for investing through them – the government wants to encourage you to save for your future – and you can open an IRA with any brokerage firm, and use it to invest in any type of security you want.
The only downside to IRA’s is that the government limits those generous tax breaks: The accounts have annual contribution ceilings that restrict how much you can invest per year. And if you miss out on contributing for any given year, your chance to claim the tax break for that year is lost forever.
If you are ready to purchase a Gold IRA consisting of physical precious metals coins and bullion ro rollover your existing 401k or retirement plan to one, feel free to read about the Best Gold IRA Options, or go straight to finding the best Gold IRA Company to work with, as this is a very important step before you decide to put your resources into this venture.
Do you have any questions about December’s Gold Investment News? Ask below!
I wanted to get more into gold investments in 2019 but never knew where to start, how to start and what sort of money I had to invest. Since the price of gold was on a downward spiral I decided to stay away from it and invest into other things. However, it seems I should still invest with gold and see what the future holds. Do you think gold is going to increase price in the future or go down? Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise.
Hello Brandon. If you want to invest in gold, I would recommend that you look into investing into gold for the long-term, that you invest in physical gold bullion and coins (preferably bullion), from our List of Top 10 Gold IRA Companies. (See: http://bestiraoptions.com/)
Gold rises in value as the dollar depreciates in value, and because we see a continuing depreciation of the dollar and more reason to believe that it will continue to do so as they only continue to print more fiat money not based on any substantial commodity, we believe that gold will continue to only rise in value. This is why investing your money in physical gold and bullion that has actual worth and high intrinsic value is the best way to invest your fiat money and the best way to invest in gold itself. (See Page: http://bestiraoptions.com/best-gold-ira-options)
Hello David,
Thank you for this great informative article on Gold IRA Investment news! I have been thinking of rolling over my last 401K into a self-directed gold IRA with Regal Assets. I thought this might be a better idea than taking it out completely and getting hit with a penalty.
It looks like the data backs up the idea of looking into Gold assets as a safer long-term investment. I just wonder about if a crisis ever did happen, how would I physically be able to get my gold assets from the depository warehouse halfway across the country somewhere? Would my paper assets just become as worthless as paper at that point? I just don’t know if I can really trust them if something chaotic were to actually happen.
I wanted to thank you for providing these resources and your best recommendation. I will have to check them out in the near future.
Hello Daniel!
I’m glad you have decided on rolling over 401k to a Gold IRA with Regal Assets. They offer two service items that you can constantly use for your convenience with such events.
The first is that they use Brinks Security. At any point after rolling over your 401k to Regal Assets, Brinks Security will use their security transportation system to store your physical gold into the depository warehouse of your choosing or the company’s choosing (or wherever you decide to store your physical gold). When you open up your account with Regal Assets, Brinks will be the ones responsible for transporting your physical gold bullion or coins and whenever an emergency happens and you need to relocate that gold, they will still be the ones responsible as well, as Regal Assets will use them to relocate your gold.
The second service item that Regal Assets offers is that ALL your physical gold goes through isolated stockpiling. Because of the fact that your gold is stockpiled in an isolated location (your gold is privately stored and located away from the gold held by other IRA-holders), it is always easy to locate your gold and send it to your next rendezvous if such an emergency that you mentioned should occur.
Thus, because of 1) their Brinks Security System ready to transport your gold at any time, and 2) their mandatory isolated stockpiling system for all physical gold held at the depositories, you can be rest assured that your gold is always safe and ready to be physical relocated at your convenience at any time!