Why Gold Price DROPs lately? (Oct 2011)

During market uncertainties, there are two popular safe assets which is Gold and USD. This explain why the demand for these two assets is great, resulting them to become more valuable while equity market fell. We experienced the said scenario recently and let's see the chart below to gauge the Gold price movements.

"Gold prices collapsed from their August highs in September amid a broad commodity sell-off and despite intensifying concerns over sovereign debt issues in Europe. After exhibiting a remarkable correlation to real rates this year, particularly during the swift August rally, the sharp pullback in gold prices occurred with real rates mostly unchanged."

"Gold prices have now fallen back in line with our 3-month price target. As we expect gold prices will continue to be driven in large measure by the evolution of US real interest rates and with our US economic outlook pointing for continued low levels of US real rates in 2012, we continue to recommend long trading positions in gold and reiterate our 12-month price target of $1,860/toz", reported Goldman Sachs.

Why is it different this round?

Supposedly, gold prices should move in-line with USD. But, we see USD strengthening to months high while gold prices faced some setbacks lately. We at Finance Malaysia would like to guess the off-the-screen factors such as...

First, who is holding the most gold?

Second, who is in dire needs to sell gold reserves?

Of course, European countries (highlighted in yellow)

Now, you know why gold prices behave differently? Ha...ah. We are not surprise by the sell-down (if any), given the high valuations gold fetches when it recorded all-time high almost every days until $1,900/toz. Does Gold more important than cash right now? Yes for China, No for Europe.