For avid Japan-watchers, the past six months have been enthralling. First, the rhetoric used by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his election campaign was a marked break from the past. By openly challenging the status quo, Abe made it clear he was (and is) serious that Japan's legacy of deflation must be turned back.
The recent sharp drop in the gold price has taken many investors by surprise, setting off a scramble to understand why, and what lies ahead. The past years' series of crises and the onset of quantitative easing by the world's major central banks a few years ago invited new interest in gold.