Throughout the year, reports of gold’s demise as a top-performing asset and safety vehicle have proven to be premature. Whenever gold suffers even the slightest of setbacks, the bears have attempted to break the metal’s longer-term uptrend but have consistently failed in this attempt. Gold’s latest show of weakness in September was again met with a renewed safety-related bid, which was based in part on the prospect of looser monetary policy on the part of the world’s leading central banks. In this report, we’ll review the various factors that warrant an optimistic stance toward gold.