At the beginning of November, I took a look at the seasonal price trends for gold. Back then, it seemed that November and December were historical good months for gold. This came as a relief following gold’s seasonally weakest month of October.

Gold came through big time in November rising from $730.75 to $814.50, representing a gain of $83.75 or 11.46%. This marked gold’s biggest monthly gain since September 1999 when gold rose 20.68%.

Will the trend continue? In the past ten years, gold has shown an average gain of 1.67% for the month of December, rising 6 times and falling 4 times. Today on the first day of December, gold is showing a 2% loss, dragged down with the stock markets.

If December doesn’t come through, there’s always January to look forward to. In the past ten years, the first month of the year has produced an average gain of 2.15%. Much of gains came in recent years. Two out of the past three years, gold has posted a gain of over 10% in the month of January.

It’s only two trading days into November, and gold is already posting a sizable gain for the month. I took a look at some recent historical data to try to see if gold displays any seasonal performance patterns.

Specifically, I looked at the closing price of gold for each month since 1998. Then I determined the percentage gain or loss for each month based on the difference between the closing price present month and prior month.

With the percentage change for each month, I could take a look at the average gain/loss for each month and the number of times gold was up or down for each month. While this is only a limited set of data, it does suggest some strong seasonal patterns.

Closing Monthly Gold Prices 1998 – Present
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Monthly Percentage Change Gold Prices 1998 – Present

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Based on the data examined, gold typically experiences its worst month in October, which certainly held true this year.

Gold experiences its strongest month in September. This year gold posted its second biggest monthly percentage gain in September. Other strong months based on the data include January, November, and December. So far this year, January has held true. Will November and December follow?

I usually don’t put too much faith in seasonal patterns, but I feel that they are useful to be aware of. If nothing else, this is just one more factor contributing to a growing number of catalysts which could propel the price of gold higher into the end of the year.