True gold aficionados are by now familiar with the annual report published by our friends at Incrementum. They really do an amazing job of putting together key facts, figures and insightful analyses on the precious metals' markets and the global economy.

The newest issue has already received quite a bit of attention. Ronald Stoeferle and Mark Valek discuss a broad variety of factors that have influenced gold over the past year, while they provide an outlook for the future as well.

A few key take-aways from the report follow below, although this is really just scratching the surface of the extensive work done by Incrementum and we do recommend you read the full report.

• ,De-Dollarization is making the headlines:,, the global monetary and US-centric currency architecture is changing. Other currencies and political conglomerates are growing and becoming more powerful.
• ,A turn of the tide in monetary policy: Recent events portray a "monetary U-turn", which leads to the expectation of more monetary experiments ahead. As financial markets and the global economy continue to wane, central bankers can be expected to once again “do whatever it takes…"
• ,Central Bank creativity to be expected: In that same context, negative interest rates are likely to remain for quite some time. And upon the next severe downturn, we should expect even more “creative” measures and unprecedented moves, beyond low interest rates and monetary inflation.
• ,Gold prices are up in most major currencies: It appears that the next bull market cycle is underway and gold trades in multiple currencies are at all-time highs. While the sentiment was still relatively bearish until recently, the tide is starting to turn.
• ,Gold mining stocks heading up: Mining companies are starting to gain traction too. Mining stocks are beginning a new bull market and afford an interesting alternative to mainstream equity positions.

More takeaways are provided in the report on page 4:

,>> View Entire Report (340 pages) here.

,>> View Condensed Version (100 pages) here.