There is a common human habit of looking forward to a new year with expectations of major shifts, changes, and developments to come. In reality, one year is a continuation of the previous one, and the most likely way forward is a continuation of the trends in place in the final months of the previous year. This is not always true, and sometimes new years begin with dramatic shifts in decision making by powerful political, economic, military, or financial entities that create significant changes in the direction of trends. More often than not, however, this does not happen.

A continuation of what has been happening by and large would be good for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.

As 2020 begins, there are any number of prognostications about major changes to come. Most likely, 2020 will see a continuation of what we have been living with in 2019:

• Continued economic growth in most parts of the world, albeit slow growth.
• The avoidance of a recession for now.
• Accommodative monetary policies.
• Domestic and international political turmoil in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and other countries.
• Equity and bond markets relatively unaffected by such political strife, taking their cues more from accommodative monetary policies and the ability of large companies to manage their share prices through buy backs and other practices, keeping equity markets on the steady upward trend that has been maintained since 2010.

Just as the gathering political storms did not disrupt the slow but steady advance of economic activities in 2019, they should not be expected to cause major disruptions in 2020. They clearly reduced growth around the world in 2019, and they are likely to continue to inhibit growth, but they may not push the world into a recession this year.

All of this said, most investors and market participants are not fooled by the calm financial market indicators in the face of a vast array of struggles and strife. Everyone assumes sooner or later these issues will need to be resolved. But after a decade of radically different monetary policies from pre-2008 practices that have managed to keep equity markets and overall economic growth rising even in the face of what some thought certainly would lead to recessions, inflation, or worse, the consensus view appears to be to enjoy rising market values while they last, and worry about the consequences of fiscal irresponsibility when the negative effects begin to appear.

CPM Group’s Trade Recommendations provide short term trading opportunities and strategies for gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, and petroleum, deploying futures, forwards, and options. Spot gold strategies are available directly from CPM clients. Other trade recommendations on spot, futures, forward, and option strategies are available directly from CPM Group on a sliding scale reflecting the intensities of the services taken by individual clients. Interested parties should contact CPM at info@cpmgroup. To discuss a program tailored to their needs and desires.

CPM Group’s Precious Metals Advisory is produced monthly and distributed by e-mail. Annual subscriptions are $3,800. Single issues are available for $450. Send requests to [email protected].

CPM Group’s 2019 Silver Yearbook, Gold Yearbook and Platinum Group Metals Yearbook, containing accurate and unbiased data on these metals’ markets with historical data as well as current statistics, are available for $160 each. Contact CPM at [email protected] or order the reports at our website, www.cpmgroup.com/store.http://cpmgroup.com/store The 2020 Yearbooks will be released between March and June.