The European Central Bank needs to approve any operation in the foreign reserves of euro zone countries, including gold and large foreign currency holdings, the ECB’s President Mario Draghi said on Thursday.

Executive Summary of the In Gold We Trust Chartbook

Economies work best when currencies are stable in value. Once we know what the goal is, we then look for a way to achieve it; and the best way has always been to base a currency on gold. Nobody has found a better way, even in the form of a proposal; and nobody has ever needed to find a better way, because gold has always worked very well.

The sources said that tens of tons that Daesh had been keeping in their last hotbed in al-Baghouz area in Deir Ezzor countryside have been handed to the Americans, adding up to other tons of gold that Americans have found in other hideouts for Daesh, making the total amount of gold taken by the Americans to the US around 50 tons, leaving only scraps for the SDF Kurdish militias that serve them the US operation.

The US had done the same thing when it took over Ukraine by a brutal coup in February 2014: It grabbed the gold.

With sentiment for the precious metals returning, outlook on prices turning bullish, and central banks piling on gold reserves, now is a great time to own the metals, according to panelists on the Ultimate Gold Panel.

The common theme at two mining investment conferences held last week in Cape Town was that putting cash into gold mining companies offers the best prospects in the commodity space.

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), whose gold bullion business is one of Asia’s largest, said on Thursday it was closing its precious metals vault in Singapore.

The bank opened the vault - which could hold 50 tonnes of gold worth around $2 billion at current prices - in 2013. That year, ANZ said it distributed close to 15 percent of the world’s primary gold production.

An Arizona legislator has put forward a bill to de-risk the state’s financial holdings with a modest allocation to physical gold and silver in the state’s reserve fund.

Introduced by Representative Mark Finchem (R-Tucson), the Arizona Sound Money Stabilization Act (HB 2500) requires that at least 10% of Arizona’s Budget Stabilization Fund be held in the monetary metals in a secure depository.

Arizona’s Budget Stabilization Fund has almost $500 million in assets but is currently invested in debt instruments and the stock market. The state owns no gold or silver.

Gold exposure, in our view, is the antidote to unknown adverse repercussions stemming from a sovereign-debt crisis. Gold has always protected capital from currency debasement. We believe it will prove to be a winning strategy in a bear market. Depressed gold and silver mining stocks have historically generated massive upside against a backdrop of systemic risk concerns. The tide of easy credit and risk-taking appears to be receding. The US is beginning to sport a debt-to-GDP ratio worthy of any banana republic. Therefore, we believe that exposure to gold is both timely and potentially rewarding.

With only one trading day remaining in 2018, I’m pleased to report that the price of gold has so far beaten the S&P 500 Index for the month of December (4.4 percent versus minus 10 percent), the fourth quarter (7.4 percent versus minus 15 percent) and the year (minus 2 percent versus minus 7 percent). Since stocks have stumbled recently, this might not come as such a shock.

What might surprise some of you is that gold has also outperformed the market for the century (344 percent versus 67 percent).