1. By Tom, Reece, Tom and Vivek
The gold market

2. Origin of the gold market
The world’s trade in bullion is London-based with a global reach of activity and participants.
The roots of the London Bullion Market can be traced to the partnership between Moses Mocatta and the East India Company, who started shipping gold together towards the end of the 17th century.
Shortly afterwards, while Sir Isaac Newton was master of the Royal Mint, gold in England was overvalued so it became more freely circulated than silver.
This increased circulation quickly led to England having a gold based coinage, whereas the rest of Europe remained silver based until the 1850s.

3. The first gold rush
The first gold rush of 1697 brought gold from Brazil into London, partly transported on ships owned by the East India Company which had a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I.
This inflow of gold led to demand for a purpose-built London vault, which the Bank of England duly set up.
Their 'bullion warehouse' served the whole of the European market, as it does now, and was further stocked by the influx to London from the subsequent gold rushes in California, Australia and South Africa.
The refineries that were set up to process this gold were located close to the Bank of England (who owned the St Luke’s refinery) which played a key role in being a custodian, regulator and facilitator of lending and selling of gold by other banks.

4. Over the past 10 years
Since 2005 the price of gold has fluctuated. In 2006 the price was very low and increased to a peak price in mid In 2013 the price of gold fell rapidly but levelled off near the end of the year. Currently the price is still fluctuating but still slowly decreasing.

5. Trends in the gold market
As of late, the gold market has been ever decreasing from the large increase in price, some economists predict the price of gold per ounce could even fall below $1000 per ounce this year, this would have a big impact on the market itself as gold is a very valuable and important material, being used in many different products, therefore the predicted trend would be that the price will continue to decrease, as the gold market is unstable to this date.

6. Reasons
The most immediate reason for gold's woes is the strong dollar. Gold is priced in dollars, so if the American currency goes up, investors mark down the price of gold accordingly.
The big hope for gold fans was that China, which aims to make the yuan into a reserve currency, would boost its gold stocks to the hefty levels held by Western central banks, in order to make it credible in international eyes. But this does not seem to be happening.
The nuclear deal with Iran reduces the risk of war (which tends to boost gold).

7. More reasons why gold has shifted
On the 15th of August 1971, President Nixon removed gold from standard. This meant that you could not convert money or other financial possessions into gold store value, so anything that has large finacial value it cannot be stored and retrieved over time and therefore you can not get “purchasing” power in the future.
This therefore made a huge economical shift and a tremendous impact on the price of gold around the globe.
By closing the gold window, the United States made it impossible for other nations to “peg” their currency to the gold standard. As a direct result of the economic policies by the USA, the gold standard was all but abandoned and the world's major currencies began to float.

8. Gold Supply and demand
Today, no single country accounts for more than 14 per cent of world production of gold.
At the end of 2014, there were 183,600 tonnes of gold in existence above ground.
If every single ounce of this gold were placed next to each other, then it would result in pure gold only measuring about 21 metres in any direction.

9. Gold supply and demand
All over the world, gold has had a huge financial value. For example, gold is used to manage risk in financial portfolios and protect the wealth of nations. Gold is important during periods of financial stress as we can protect against risk without reducing long term returns by stabilising the returns and protecting our wealth.
These different uses for gold by central banks and investors, mean that different sectors of the gold market has risen at different points in the global economic cycle.

10. Chinese stock market crash
 In the year leading up to the crash there was an influx of investments using borrowed money. These investments exceeded many profits and went quicker than the economy was growing. This led to many brokers using a ‘margin call’ in order to restore economy. Investors were also forced to sell off all of their stock precipitating the crash. The fall of 8.5% on the Chinese market has had many knock on effects including the commodity market, commodities such as gold, platinum, oil and many more have experienced massive losses in value.