The January edition of the Market Overview is always dedicated to the summary of last year's gold market fundamentals. It was indeed quite a fascinating time. The Fed cut the federal funds rate three times and ended the quantitative tightening, or even resumed the quantitative easing, just as the ECB did. Christine Lagarde became the new ECB President. The yield curve inverted and then reinverted. Trade wars eased somewhat in December with the phase one agreement. The bond yields bottomed out, while the U.S. dollar peaked. The price of gold jumped above $1,500 at one point, to stabilize around $1,460 at the end of the year.

Our summary is not merely backward-looking. On the contrary, the analysis should help investors better understand the precious metals market, and draw appropriate investment conclusions for the New Year.

We will also share our fundamental outlook for 2020, presenting our base scenario and its implications for the gold market. We will focus on the impact of the macroeconomic drivers, such as the interest rates, the Fed and the ECB monetary policies, the U.S. fiscal policy, etc. We argue that the fundamental outlook for gold has deteriorated since 2019.

Last but not least, we will analyze the potential upside and downside risks for the gold market in 2020. In particular, we will examine whether investors should expect recession this year. We conclude that the although investors should not neglect the yield curve inversion, other recessionary indicators do not signal upcoming downturn, at least not yet.