By Adam Hamilton
321Gold
The mighty GLD gold ETF’s bullion holdings have remained stable in 2014, an impressive feat. Last year they suffered an epic outlying record plummet as the Fed’s stock-market levitation sucked capital out of alternative investments. This year’s resiliency in the face of the ongoing stock-market melt-up almost certainly means the bottom is in. GLD’s holdings are set to surge as weaker stock markets entice traders back.
The SPDR Gold Shares gold ETF, GLD, is a juggernaut in the gold realm. Now approaching its tenth birthday, it has grown into the world’s flagship and massively-dominant gold ETF. GLD’s impact on the global gold price can be so supreme and overpowering at times that all precious-metals investors and speculators simply have to follow it. Last year was a key case in point, where GLD trading controlled gold.
According to the World Gold Council’s latest estimate, global gold demand fell 514.7 metric tons in 2013, or 11.2%. That was enough to blast gold down 27.9% to its worst annual performance in nearly a third of a century. The problem wasn’t traditional bar-and-coin investment, which soared 31.1% higher last year to 1780.6t. Gold plunged solely because global ETF demand plummeted to negative 879.8t in 2013.