I read an interesting article in Bloomberg Businessweek today about the impacts of El Niño on the worldwide price of gold. According to the article, one of the biggest groups of buyers of gold is Indian farmers, who use gold as an investment and as a dowry when their daughters get married. This year the strong El Niño has caused a weakening of the monsoon rains in India, resulting in much lower crop yields than usual. With little income available, farmers are not able to purchase gold, and so due to the lack of demand, gold prices have been falling.
If you are interested, you can read more about it at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/if-you-want-to-learn-about-gold-speak-to-an-indian-sugar-farmer. A second article relating Indian tractor sales to investing in gold can be found here.
