Mining production? No. China's consumer demand? No. The main drivers of gold prices are, as I've repeated many times, the U.S. dollar and real interest rates. You don't believe it? You don't have to - just look at the charts below. The first one displays the greenback and the dollar-denominated price of gold. Because other series start much later, I used here the Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index against major currencies that circulate widely outside the country of issuance. Although the correlation is not perfect, the inverse relationship is quite strong and bull and bear markets in gold coincide with the bear and ... (full story)