Central banks continue to drive gold prices higher, World Gold Council says

While the WGC says inflation risks are still the strongest fundamental on gold prices, central bank policy and gold purchases are a growing force on price direction.

In the World Gold Council's just-released quarterly Investment Statistics Commentary for the third quarter, the nonprofit association of the world's leading gold mining companies clearly shifts the focus of what's moving the yellow metal's price more and more toward central banks.

For the WGC, the various ways central banks are employing "unconventional monetary policies" are playing a bigger and bigger role in affecting the price of gold. ...

From a global gold investor's perspective, most of the big news came from central banks hinting at or announcing plans to extend or expand their "unconventional monetary policy" (which the WGC uses to mean pretty much anything other than interest-rate manipulation).

Since policy meetings weren't scheduled until the later half of the third quarter, many investors held off making decisions until after they could read the defense, so to speak, seeing what the central banks were actually going to do. At the same time, data available on central bank purchases shows that many countries continue to add to their gold reserves. 

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