Ever since it became known that Donald Trump would be the next American president, stock market indexes (the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq) took an advance on his future tax plans. The Dow Jones rose by more than 12% after Trump´s election, while the S&P 500 rose by 10%. However, this so-called “Trump-trade” (buying stocks in anticipation of a future tax reduction) seems to be turning against itself, since it is not as easy as expected to actually lower taxes.

On various occasions I have written on how the gold price is determined. Some people, however, still insist that there exists a disconnect between “paper gold” and “physical gold.” This myth is a result of a complete misunderstanding about how futures markets actually work. This time around, we will look at some arguments of several colleagues in the gold industry. What is the reason that the physical and futures market cannot have an isolated existence from each other? 

The Fed increased the official rate in the US from 0.75 to 1 percent. The central bank appears keen to keep its promise of December last year. At the time, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) implied that the official rate would be raised three times in the course of 2017. Is this unexpected rate hike in March a reason for sceptics as yours truly to expect two additional rate hikes? In my view, we should still call such expectations seriously into question.

First about that rate hike earlier this week. I am increasingly convinced that this step should be seen as something the Fed could not possibly avoid, rather than as a rate increase that the Fed could have postponed further.

While the Fed was fighting against the dangers of deflation until recently, in the meantime the loss in