Gyroscopic Investing

Between preparations for Chinese (Lunar) New Year, and the Indian wedding season, does gold exhibit any regularly defined seasonality when prices are highest / lowest?

Hmm. You are really looking for a consistent jump early in our calendar year, correct? I know when Chinese New Year falls but can't seem to pull up anything on "Indian wedding season" without getting a bunch of precious metal links. Here is one source for gold prices:

http://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html

Looking at different time frames I don't see a reliable pattern. 2014 and 2015 seemed to get a price bump early in the year, but if gold is moving either up or down strongly, there doesn't seem to be anything that can really get in its way.

ochotona wrote: Between preparations for Chinese (Lunar) New Year, and the Indian wedding season, does gold exhibit any regularly defined seasonality when prices are highest / lowest?

I think you're Chinese, so you probably know better than we do, but I don't remember that much gold changing hands during New Year's these days. Maybe it's waning and more of a wedding gift thing? I'm not sure.

I don't think Chinese New Year should really drive up the price of gold. My understanding is that gold is given in the form of jewelry, not coins or bars. Much of the value in jewelry comes from the workmanship, correct? Unless there is a lot of consumption by weight, it shouldn't move the gold spot price much.

ochotona wrote: Between preparations for Chinese (Lunar) New Year, and the Indian wedding season, does gold exhibit any regularly defined seasonality when prices are highest / lowest?

There is a seasonality from Oct to 2nd quarter of next year, but it has more to do with the realities of the mining business and promotional activity than gold per se.

barrett wrote: I don't think Chinese New Year should really drive up the price of gold. My understanding is that gold is given in the form of jewelry, not coins or bars. Much of the value in jewelry comes from the workmanship, correct? Unless there is a lot of consumption by weight, it shouldn't move the gold spot price much.

Eastern gold jewelry (as well as a lot of Middle East gold jewelry, I believe) is mostly about the gold content, not about workmanship. Heavy 22k gold links are preferred.

Note: this is only my understanding and could be wrong and/or out of date.

I found some seasonality charts online, but nothing that was really convincing (like... no error bars).