By Brendan Conway
It was a historically bad month for gold, whose 5.5% drop marked the metal’s worst November performance since 1978.
Gold’s price is down again Monday morning. Blame a combo of improving economic data, Federal Reserve “taper” chatter, and year-end selling.
During November, fund-investor outflows continued, with $1.4 billion exiting gold-tracking ETFs, according to BlackRock. That brings the 2013 year-to-date outflow for the group to $36.4 billion. Gold ETFs around the world hold $74.1 billion, according to the same figures.
It was a month when, against the odds, gold’s price reached parity with Bitcoin, demand in India fell by half ahead of the key Diwali festival season, and traders studiously ignored Fed officials’ various attempts to assuage worries over the beginning of the end of central-bank bond buying.
About the data: A gauge of U.K. manufacturing activity rose to the highest since November 2011, while a similar reading gained in Germany. In China, the HSBC/Markit Purchasing Managers’ Index showed manufacturing continues to expand and stabilize. (It wasn’t all rosy: A poor showing in Spain appears to spook European stock investors, while manufacturing activity in Brazil also dropped.)
The same reading in the U.S. at 10 a.m. also may help set the tone. Economists expect the Institute for Supply Management’s November manufacturing purchasing-managers’ index to drop to 55.2 from 56.4 in October.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury knocking at 2.80% again — it’s at 2.77% this morning.