In more ways than one, 2016 was a roller coaster year. One need only look at gold’s performance to confirm this. After rallying more than 30 percent in the first half, the precious metal stalled in the days before the U.S. election, then retreated on a weekly basis, under pressure from a strengthening dollar and tightening monetary policy. Gold is now down more than two standard deviations from its mean, or average, dollar amount. The reason I show you this is because, in the past, this was a good time to begin accumulating, as mean reversion soon followed. Looking Ahead in the Near Term U.S. debt dynamics are expected to turn positive for gold in 2017. That’s according to ICBC Standard Bank, which makes the case that the costs of higher yields are being overlooked. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculates that net interest payments on the nearly $14 trillion of U.S. debt will amount to about $250 billion in 2016—or 1.4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. «If we apply an 80 basis point increase to the CBO’s net interest forecasts and keep the other variables unchanged, then by 2026 the Treasury would be paying an additional $185 billion in interest annually, and interest will have increased to 3.3 percent of GDP», the bank writes, with emphasis my own. Looking Ahead in the Long Term Gold’s rarity is one of the key reasons why it’s so highly valued across the globe and for most of recorded human history. Back in August, I shared with you that the precious metal makes up only 0.003 parts per million of the earth’s crust. «Peak gold» has been a topic for years now, with major discoveries on the decline. According to a recent Bloomberg article, the number of new gold deposits discovered in 2015 was down a whopping 85 percent since 2006. This means annual production is expected to peak in 2019, followed by a steady decline until at least 2025.