Gold now up for the year

Don't look now, but the little yellow metal that pays no interest and provides no dividend is one of just a few assets that can make the claim of being in positive territory for the year.
It's only eked out a gain of about one percent - a London PM fix of $833.75 last December 31st versus about $840 as this is written - but, most investors would be happy with any number that doesn't start with a minus sign this year.

Interestingly, if you held the physical metal versus the paper variety, you'd be up somewhere around five percent at the moment.

The next two weeks could also be kind to gold as the second half of December has produced an average gain of about two percent over the last seven years, since the price began rising at the rate of almost 20 percent per year.
Just an average gain between now and New Year's Day would put the price at around $860 an ounce, still down more than 15 percent from the high seen in the spring, but quite a good result, all things considered.