A little bit on Gold

Some questions... and answers:

• Isn’t gold a hedge against inflation? – No central banks are showing concerns about inflation. 

• Shouldn’t gold act as a safe haven – haven’t seen this at all this year. Why? Fed policy, probably, everyone is interested in equities. Investors see more obvious trades alongside $85bn a clip. People like to trade gold as 1) a currency, 2) a commodity. Looks like it’s moving in tandem with silver.
• Shouldn’t gold prop up because of demand from all these emerging economies? Gold demand is mainly from China and India. China isn’t looking to buy as much gold as the economy’s export growth slows. 

Whilst working in a research role at a buy-side firm in 2011 when Gold was reaching insane levels ($1900), I was doing some administrative work regarding fund redemption and subscriptions. Gold ETF subscriptions were through the roof. But now? Gold ETF outflows a few ago were at all time highs (although this doesn't necessarily say much given ETF proliferation is something relatively new), and Gold has fallen consistently for two years.

The fundamentals haven't supported gold for a while but there has been a recent uptrend, with Gold topping 1300. Technicals, such as RSI (60+), along with the wedge suggests that gold may see a retracement. Some analysts are looking at a target sub- 1000 by the end of 2013; others are still looking at levels up to 1500. An interesting video on the subject can be found here:
DailyFx Gold Roundtable July 26th

Some people have a very different view however:
"Shrugging Off the Bears, Schiff Launches New Gold Mutual Fund"

(http://goldinvestingnews.com/36789/shrugging-off-the-bears-schiff-launches-new-etf.html)