by Alasdair MacLeod
Gold Money
In very quiet trade, gold and silver remained in consolidation mode this week. From last Friday’s close, by morning trade European time gold had drifted $12 lower to $1568, and silver by 25 cents to $17.78.
News was dominated by the coronavirus, which is now spreading beyond China. At the time of writing, officially there were 31,515 cases, 638 deaths and 1,665 recovered. But these are predominantly figures supplied by the Chinese government for all but 300 cases and are not widely trusted.
Financial markets are behaving as if this virus is irrelevant, with bond yields subdued and equity markets rising strongly. In fact, most of China’s production has been shut down indefinitely, with negative consequences for all the other economies supplied by Chinese production.