Why Are Investors Returning To The Gold Market?

Investors across the globe are, with caution, re-entering the market for gold, making a bet against the global economy as gold prices surged this past week to their highest level in eight months, the Economist reported.

Gold was trading at $1,200 an ounce Thursday, spurred by big sell-offs across international equity markets. The rallying of gold prices comes amid a series of concerns across these same international markets, such as falling oil prices and how it will affect emerging markets and debt concerns in the U.S. shale-oil industry.

Renewed fears of deflation stemming from falling oil prices have pushed down interest rates, which also has been good for gold, the Economist noted. On commercial bank deposits, some banks have imposed negative interest rates, which create an incentive to invest in gold.

However, global demand dropped a bit in 2015, and some, such as Goldman Sachs, expect gold will fall in 2016 for the fourth year in a row. Other estimates, however, have gold in one of its best phases in the past 150 years, Fortune reported. Gold prices retreated Friday after Thursday's surge.

Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid said the gold price “has just hit an all-time high at around 44 times the price of oil. The previous high of 41 in 1892 has just been exceeded. For perspective the ratio was at 6.6 in June of 2008 and only 12 in May of 2014. The long term average is 15.5,” Fortune reported.

BullionVault, an online gold investors platform, said Monday was its busiest trading day ever, the Telegraph reported. Gold producers were some of the biggest risers on the FTSE 100 Index on the London Stock Exchange Thursday.

“The bullion market has been building with interest since the end of last year but this morning things have gone bananas,” Rob Halliday-Stein, managing director of Britain’s largest online gold retailer BullionByPost, told the Telegraph. “Some bankers in London are placing unusually large orders for physical gold.”