Gold prices fall, trade deal soon

India’s central bank plans to ask lenders to follow stricter underwriting processes for gold loans and monitor the end-use of funds as it tries to cool growth in the fast-growing segment, seven people, including industry sources and those aware of the regulator’s thinking, said.

“The RBI wants to ensure that the entities are following a standard protocol and any growth in the gold loan sector is not out of bounds,” one of the sources aware of the central bank’s thinking, said.

Source – Reuters

Stocks recoiled on Wednesday, while safe-haven gold held near record highs as a nervous world awaited details of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans and investors fretted about the risks of an intensifying global trade war.

“Whatever’s announced today, I doubt very much will be the framework that’s in place in, say, nine months’ time because we know there’ll be negotiations around this,” Daiwa Capital economist Chris Scicluna said.

“It’s very difficult to predict with any confidence what the ultimate impact is going to be, whether broadly, economically, in terms of rates or in terms of stock markets,” he said.

“Investors are hoping for some clarity, and perhaps the start of the deal-making phase. But tariffs are already weighing on business sentiment, and this will probably feed through into lower global economic activity in the coming months,” said Ben Bennett, Asia-Pacific investment strategist at Legal & General Investment Management.

Source – Reuters