As I sat down to write my final article of the year for The National, I thought it sensible to look back at the remarks I made when I wrote my first article nearly 12 months ago - in part to check whether I had made any outlandish predictions or managed to say anything particularly foolish.
Happily, I found that I still stand by what I felt the future would hold for gold and the factors likely to influence it.
However, I had forgotten that back in January some analysts had the year mapped out.
In my column I wrote that they forecast that "the US dollar will see stability return, the global economy will return to steady growth and there will be no further need for quantitative easing.
At a stroke, any rationale for owning gold will disappear: the metal will no longer be needed as a hedge against the greenback, fears over both inflation and deflation will be unfounded and monetary authorities the world over will start to raise interest rates".
Having been positive for gold, I disputed these predictions. Currently the outlook seems to be rather more pessimistic than it was 12 months ago, with various organisations gloomily asserting that with quantitative easing Mark I having given way to QEII, this is a policy that will never end: that the consequences of removing stimulus from economies will be so politically ruinous that no government will ever be tempted to try.
This has precipitated even more interest in owning physical assets, and with gold close to all-time highs, some of the attention is switching to other precious metals such as silver, base metals (copper seems to be a particular favourite) as well as oil.
However, despite this apparent dilution of gold's appeal, I think there is little doubt that it will continue to be the main beneficiary of this need for tangible investments, in part because it is portable and readily stored.
But perhaps more important is the emotional response that gold engenders and the fact that it has been "money" for thousands of years - the first true gold coins appeared in the reign of King Croesus more than 2,500 years ago.
It is this notion of gold as money that is key to its current performance, with people claiming that the past 30 years, when the metal was marginalised, were an aberration and that we are in fact reverting to a more normal state of affairs with gold back at the centre of the financial system.
These views were given strength when Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, was quoted by the Financial Times on November 7 as saying that "leading economies should consider re-adopting a modified global gold standard to guide currency movements".
Perhaps surprisingly, I cannot see gold as the overriding influence on global monetary policies. It is a market that is just too small. While it could satisfy the requirements for a much less developed and integrated global economy, it is difficult to see gold as much more than a barometer of the financial system in the future.
Certainly it can be used as a measurement to determine relative currency strengths and the impact of expansionary monetary policies, but never again as the sole backing for currencies.
For example, if the US were to use its entire gold reserves to back the notes and coins in circulation, this would imply a gold price of some US$6,500 an ounce.
If this was widened to include all estimated global wealth and the gold that has been mined in the history of the world, this would suggest a gold price in excess of $28,000. Seems to be rather unlikely, and this is ignoring all the upheavals and disruptions that such a move would create.
On the plus side though, while there may not be enough gold around to back currencies it is the fact that it is relatively scarce that is core to its appeal and why I believe it will continue to appreciate next year.
The widely used estimate of 165,000 tonnes of metal that has been extracted since pre-history is still less than 5 per cent of global wealth. All it needs are a few percentage points of allocation from portfolios to gold for the impact to be profound.
Indeed, if the shift was a single percentage point, the implied price of the metal would be roughly $1,700 - and that assumes that the 30,000 tonnes sitting in central banks is available, as is every item of jewellery and museum piece. Clearly nonsense.
I believe that continuing global uncertainty will benefit gold next year. It is not even particularly important whether the outlook is for inflation or deflation, but much more simply that investors are unsure as to the ability and willingness of governments and monetary authorities to return the global economy to some form of balanced growth.
Therefore, I believe that although gold has managed to rise nearly 25 per cent against the US dollar (and 35 per cent against the euro) this year, in the current environment it will continue to perform in next year.
Jonathan Spall is director of commodities distribution at Barclays Capital in London and the author of How to Profit in Gold
