Page 44 Page 44 MLEN SPRING 2020 By Kevin V incent On the balance of news during the frst half of 2020 youd be hard pressed to fnd anyone who might shy away from the thought that gold was sitting pretty Goldbackers could hardly be blamed for their en thusiasm when the price per ounce closed 2019 at US151475 That excitement continued through the COVID19 outbreak in 2020 all the way to March 6th when it hit US168365 North American pro ducers were thrilled those with allin sustaining costs of less than 1000oz were enjoying the short term bump in profts while higher cost producers above 1000oz were equally happy to tell share holders that better more proftable days were ahead Canadian pro ducers also enjoyed the spread be tween the Canadian and US dollars that added even more to the bottom line But after that March 6th high the price dropped like a stone for nearly two weeks coming to rest at US1474 Depending on who you were listening to at the time fngers were pointed in all kinds of directions including the papergold promoting COMEX Commodities Exchange that specializes in futures massive institutional bets on gold s future price Major banks have been losing hun dreds of millions mostly because they were betting on gold rather than buying physical gold In the meantime multimillion dol lar computer programs continued to spit out data throughout the frst half of 2020 suggesting that gold compa nies juniors and majors alike were not only poised but in fact leading the recovery in the markets around the world The price rebounded to more than US1700 an ounce in early June be fore pulling back once more Across the markets companies like Barrick Newmont and Franco Nevada were enjoying fresh interest from institutional investors High profle billionaire hedge fund managers like John Paulson turned their attention to gold and it paid of Midtier producers like IAMGold Kirkland Lake Gold and others have been added to a number of high pro fle buy lists In early May goldchampion and bil lionaire mining investor Eric Sprott told his weekly podcast audience that the big boys are late to the party There s obviously a move here to move into these stocks said Sprott about major gold compa nies long ignored by large institu tional investors Sprott mused The computers of large investment frms keep spitting out what s the best per forming group W ell of course it has been the gold stocks and who has the best earnings W ell it s the gold stocks Sprott told his audience that an ecdotally there are a lot of invest ments happening in the majors The people selling those shares are going to be moving down into the intermediates and the juniors and the explorers he added The one place that physical gold is always welcomed is China China s physical gold demand rebounded further in April Gold s trading volume and gold with drawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange were 356t and 96t re spectively According to some analysts jewellery manufactur ers were preparing for the widely expected Labor Day Holiday and Mother s Day sales spike in early May lifting China s physical gold demand in April as a result Gold Price continues encouraging yet confounding pace