Category: 3. Business

Interest in gold has skyrocketed in recent weeks, with the price of one ounce hitting an all time high of $5,600 on January 29 before settling back to just under $5,000 on Sunday.

As economic conditions fluctuate and geopolitical tensions rise, more individuals are seeking gold as a secure investment.

In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera breaks down how gold value is determined, the prices of gold coins in different markets, and the countries holding the largest reserves.

How is the value of gold measured?

Understanding the value of a gold item requires knowing its weight in troy ounces alongside its purity in karats.

 

Weight (in troy ounces)

The weight of gold and other precious metals like silver and platinum is commonly measured in troy ounces (oz t). One troy ounce is equal to 31.1035 grammes.

At $5,000 per troy ounce, 1 gramme of gold is worth about $160, and a standard 400-troy-ounce (12.44kg) gold bar costs $2m.

Troy ounces are different from regular ounces, which weigh 28.35 grammes and are used to measure everyday items including foods.

Purity (in karats)

Karat or carat (abbreviated as “K” or “ct”) measures the purity of a gold item. Pure gold is 24 karats, while lower karats such as 22, 18, and 9 indicate that the gold is mixed with less expensive metals like silver, copper, or zinc.

To determine the purity of gold, jewellers are required to stamp a number onto the item, such as 24K or a numeric value like 999, which indicates it is 99.9 percent pure. For example, 18K gold will typically have a stamp of 750, signifying that it is 75 percent pure.

Some typical values include:

• 24 karat – 99.9% purity – A deep orange colour, is very soft, never tarnishes and is most commonly used for investment coins or bars
• 22 karat  – 91.6% purity – A rich orange colour, moderate durability, resists tarnishing and most often used for luxury jewellery
• 18 karat – 75% purity – A warm yellow colour, high durability, will have some dulling over time and most often used in fine jewellery
• 9 karat – 37.5% purity – A pale yellow colour, has the highest durability, dulls over time, used in affordable jewellery

Other karat amounts such as 14k (58.3% purity) and 10k (41.7% purity) are often sold in different markets around the world.

When you buy jewellery, the price usually depends on the day’s gold spot price, how much it costs to make, and any taxes.

If you know the item’s exact weight in grammes and the gold’s purity in karats, you can calculate the craftsmanship cost on top of that.

You typically cannot negotiate the spot gold price, but you can often haggle over the craftsmanship costs.

The price of gold has quadrupled over the past 10 years

Gold has been valued for thousands of years, serving various functions, from currency to jewellery. The precious metal is widely regarded as a safe haven asset, particularly in times of economic uncertainty or market volatility.

Up until 1971, the United States dollar was physically defined by a specific weight of gold. Under the classical gold standard, for nearly a century, from 1834 until 1933, you could walk into a bank and exchange $20 for an ounce of gold.

In 1933, amid the Great Depression, the price was raised to $35 per ounce to stimulate the economy.

In 1971, under President Richard Nixon, gold was decoupled from the dollar, and its price began to be determined by market forces.

Over the past 10 years, the price of gold has quadrupled from $1,250 in 2016 to around $5,000 today.

How is the price of gold determined in different countries?

Gold is priced globally based on the spot market, where one troy ounce is traded in US dollars on exchanges such as London and New York. Local prices vary as the dollar rate is converted into domestic currencies, and dealers add premiums for minting, distribution and demand.

Taxes and import duties further influence the final cost: India adds 3 percent GST, while the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates impose none on gold investments.

Different countries produce unique gold bullion coins and bars, each with its own distinct features and cultural significance. Notable examples include the Gold Eagle from the US, the Gold Panda from China, and the Krugerrand from South Africa.

Which countries have the most gold reserves?

The US leads global gold reserves with 8,133 tonnes, nearly equal to the combined total of the next three countries. Germany is in second place with 3,350 tonnes, and Italy comes in third with 2,451 tonnes.

The graphic below shows the top 10 countries with the largest gold reserves.

BP will face pressure from shareholders to prove it can leave a turbulent period in the past as it prepares to reveal its full-year results this week.

The company is expected to follow industry rivals by reporting weaker annual profits after global oil prices fell for a third consecutive year in 2025, in the steepest decline recorded since the Covid pandemic.

City analysts forecast BP profits of about $7.5bn (£5.5bn), down from almost $9bn in 2024, following an expected slump in fourth quarter earnings after crude prices fell below $60 a barrel for the first time in almost five years.

Meg O’Neil, who will become the chief executive of BP from April, will face pressure from investors to set out a new strategic vision, while activist shareholders continue to push the oil company to prepare for a long-term decline in fossil fuel demand.

This month a group of investors led by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, which includes the workplace pension scheme Nest, filed a resolution that called for the company to set out how it would control its spending on oil and gas projects in the years ahead.

Dutch shareholder activists at Follow This are also calling for BP to disclose its strategy for creating shareholder value under scenarios of declining demand for fossil fuels.

BP started up seven new oil and gas projects last year as the company returned its focus to fossil fuels in an effort to resuscitate itsfortunes after trying to diversify into major renewable energy investments. Five of the seven projects were delivered ahead of schedule.

Analysts at Citi told clients in a recent investor note that BP’s share price has outperformed its European rivals by 4.4%, the equivalent of about $4bn of additional equity value over the last six months. They expect that rival Shell’s “material exploration success” off the coast of Brazil could add a further $15bn to $20bn to the company’s value.

“We think all the ingredients are there for a substantial change in narrative,” Citi said.

However, shareholder activists and green groups are preparing to oppose BP’s fresh investments in new fossil fuel projects. They argue the projects will not prove to be financially sustainable as electric vehicles and that the shift to clean energy erodes demand for oil and gas.

“The new chief executive needs to come up with a strategy to address the world’s declining oil and gas markets,” said Mark van Baal, the founder of Follow This.

The International Energy Agency expects oil demand to begin falling from about 2030 in all but its most conservative outlook for global energy use.

Follow This said the new resolution, which was filed ahead of BP’s annual meeting in April, would increase shareholder pressure and focus attention on the financial unsustainability of fossil fuel business models.

“In recent years the strategy has been shaky; shifting from left to right,” Van Baal said. “In our opinion they didn’t fail because, as they suggested, they went too far too fast on green energy. They failed because their strategy was completely unclear.”

When Nicola Whyte first moved into a four-bedroom house share in Balham 16 years ago, she never imagined she would still be living there at 45. But with rents soaring, and ongoing challenges in saving up for a house deposit, she has ended up as a housemate far longer than she anticipated.

“I didn’t think I was going to be here 16 years later, but I’m not unhappy,” she said. “My friends sometimes think I’m a bit weird, they ask me how I can still do it. But I really enjoy it. The rent is really reasonable, it’s close to work and I think it gives you a deeper understanding of people.”

Data from SpareRoom, the UK’s leading website for flat and house shares, has shown a significant shift in the market in recent years, with roommates under 35 in decline and those aged over 35 on the rise.

Their survey of more than 3,500 flatmates showed that under-25s now make up just 26% of the market, down from 32% a decade ago, while renters 45 and above now make up 16%, up from 10% in 2015.

The rise in older flatmates has also led to a rise in multigenerational households – almost two-fifths of flatmates said they lived in a house where the age difference between the oldest and youngest adult was 20 years or more.

Whyte’s youngest current flatmate is 28, 17 years younger than her, and over the years she has lived with people from 21 to their late 40s. Mostly everyone gets along well, although the large age gaps have sometimes thrown up problems when people have different ideas of housemate etiquette.

An older, more independent housemate might struggle with collegiate decision-making, while younger tenants may be more likely to keep antisocial hours or have parties.

“There have been some people who didn’t really fit in” said Whyte, who works for the local council. “But really, it’s less about someone’s age and more about who they are as a person.”

Experts say a combination of fewer under-25s leaving home, and older renters being priced out of home ownership and renting solo, is thought to be fuelling the change in housemate demographics. “People think of flat sharing being a young people’s game but the older cohort are growing by far the fastest,” said Matt Hutchinson, the director of SpareRoom.

“Older people are sharing for longer and there’s this preconception that people want to live with people just like them, but actually some people prefer to live with people of different ages, different backgrounds.”

Another key factor behind the rise of age-gap house shares is over-65s sharing their homes with lodgers, something that has increased by 38% over the past two years according to SpareRoom.

When Thea May, 29, moved to south-west Wales for a new job, she found there was “literally nowhere” to rent – everything was either too expensive or in poor condition.

In desperation, her mum posted on a local Facebook group and 67-year-old Paul Williams replied – after his daughter moved out for university, he had a spare room and was looking for some company.

“I did initially think: he’s a man who’s a lot older than me, is this a wild idea? But it really wasn’t, we just got on straight away,” said May. “It provides a level of purpose, friendship and companionship for both of us.

“I don’t think I ever really notice the age gap. It mostly shows itself in the way that it confounds expectations, like sometimes if I say I don’t fancy watching TV because I want to do my crochet, he’ll say: are you actually 29? We just bumble along.

“I feel very lucky and it’s quite a profound experience. I do hope to be able to buy a home, but living near to Paul is a massive factor now.”

Williams, who was looking for some extra income and felt sharing his space was the morally right thing to do, never expected the pair’s friendship to blossom in the way it has.

“I thought she would live upstairs and we wouldn’t see much of each other,” he said. “But I can’t believe my luck in how we’ve hit it off. My friends will say: I don’t think I’d want to live with a stranger like that. But she’s not a stranger, there is a friendship now and a bond.”

Nick Henley, a co-founder of Cohabitas, a house-sharing site for over-40s, said 18% of the last 5,000 people who registered said they would be open to living in an intergenerational home.

On their platform, this can mean in traditional house shares, or things like a “helpful housemate” setup, where people move in with an older person to help with chores or for companionship.

“I think the majority of people will have to house share in the future, that’s the way things are going,” said Henley. “We need developers to start building shared housing, but it’s not happening. They’re building small places, single dwellings for young people.”

Housing charities have warned that homelessness among over-60s is rising, and single older people are increasingly likely to end up in house shares if they don’t own a property as they head into retirement.

SpareRoom said the proportion of flatsharers who are 65 and above has tripled in the past decade, although accounts for only 2.4% of the market.

“I can’t quite understand why it’s not a bigger topic, that we have a generation of people who can’t afford to buy a home,” said Hutchinson. “It’s a ticking timebomb that’s just waiting to go off.”

Get insights on thousands of stocks from the global community of over 7 million individual investors at Simply Wall St.

Fluor (FLR) has been drawing fresh attention after recent share price moves, with the stock up over the past week, month, and past 3 months, putting its longer term performance back in focus for investors.

See our latest analysis for Fluor.

That latest move takes Fluor’s share price to $46.92 and adds to a 12.52% year to date share price return. The 1 year total shareholder return of a 4.90% decline contrasts with a 161.39% gain over 5 years, which may suggest longer term momentum alongside recent volatility in how the market is pricing its risks and prospects.

If this kind of price action has you looking beyond a single contractor, it could be a moment to check out 24 power grid technology and infrastructure stocks as another way to find infrastructure related opportunities.

With Fluor trading at $46.92, a value score of 3, and a share price sitting below the average analyst target of $50.50, investors may ask whether this reflects a genuine mispricing or whether expectations about future growth are already fully reflected in the current price.

Fluor’s most followed narrative points to a fair value of $51.00, a touch above the recent $46.92 close, which puts the current analyst thinking in the spotlight.

The company’s new strategy focusing on cash generation and earnings growth is likely to improve net margins and enhance earnings. Expansion into strategic markets, coupled with project completions and acquisitions, is expected to increase revenue and enhance shareholder value.

Read the complete narrative.

Curious how a view of mid single digit revenue growth, thinner profit margins, and a higher future earnings multiple still add up to that $51.00 fair value? The full narrative lays out the math behind that tension.

Result: Fair Value of $51.00 (UNDERVALUED)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, there are still pressure points, including project delays that affect the timing of revenue and margins, as well as cost or collection issues that weigh on cash flow.

Find out about the key risks to this Fluor narrative.

While the consensus narrative points to a fair value of $51.00, our DCF model paints a different picture, with an estimate of $38.79 and Fluor trading at $46.92. That suggests the shares are priced above future cash flow estimates. Which perspective do you think deserves more weight?

Look into how the SWS DCF model arrives at its fair value.

Simply Wall St performs a discounted cash flow (DCF) on every stock in the world every day (check out Fluor for example). We show the entire calculation in full. You can track the result in your watchlist or portfolio and be alerted when this changes, or use our stock screener to discover 52 high quality undervalued stocks. If you save a screener we even alert you when new companies match – so you never miss a potential opportunity.

If you see the story differently or want to stress test the assumptions yourself, you can pull the numbers, set your own views, and Do it your way in just a few minutes.

A great starting point for your Fluor research is our analysis highlighting 3 key rewards and 2 important warning signs that could impact your investment decision.

If Fluor has sharpened your focus, do not stop here. Put the same disciplined thinking to work across other opportunities before the market moves without you.

• Target quality at a discount by scanning our 52 high quality undervalued stocks, built to surface companies with strong fundamentals priced below what many investors might expect.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include FLR.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

South Africa has committed to reaching phasing out human-caused carbon pollution by 2050. To get there, it needs to push as much renewable energy as possible into the national grid.

The country is the world’s 15th largest carbon polluter. It’s one of only a handful of countries still heavily dependent on burning coal to generate electricity. The country’s transport system is totally reliant on crude oil and its derivatives.

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Read more:
What’s stopping sunny South Africa’s solar industry? Court case sheds light on the wider problem

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One of the keys to the transition to net zero is decarbonising household energy consumption. This means finding ways for homes to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. At the moment, household energy use contributes up to 40% of total emissions.

I am an engineer and technology management specialist who recently researched how South Africa could use excess clean power from rooftop solar systems on homes if it was fed into the grid. I also studied how battery electric vehicles could be used to store solar energy at home, and feed this into the grid too.

The following analogy explains the idea: think of South Africa’s current solar energy potential like a leaking rainwater tank. It has plenty of “rain” (sunlight). But because it lacks the “pipes” (bidirectional meters) and “extra buckets” (electric vehicle batteries), half of that “water” (clean energy) spills onto the ground unused.

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Read more:
How South Africa can spread renewable energy to low income areas

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Instead, a system could be built that captures every drop of sunlight. This solar energy could be shared between the house, the car, and the neighbours to ensure the whole community has enough. Commercial projects based on this approach are already operational in China, Japan and Germany.

The biggest obstacle to this idea in South Africa is that both small-scale solar and electric vehicles are too expensive for most households, as we showed in two recently published studies on solar electricity for homes and electric vehicles.

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Read more:
Electric vehicles in South Africa: how to avoid making them the privilege of the few

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Fortunately, there is a solution: the aggressive use of two technologies. The first would be giving every home with solar power a bidirectional (two-way) meter. This is a meter that allows homeowners to sell their excess solar power back to the grid. The second would be giving electric vehicle owners a vehicle-to-grid device so that they could store excess solar power in their electric vehicle batteries and sell it back to the national grid.

We believe that a synchronised effort between two novel technology adoptions – infrastructure modernisation (installing bidirectional smart grids and vehicle-to-grid devices in homes) – could dramatically increase the country’s clean energy production.

Energy from small-scale embedded solar systems

Rooftop solar systems installed on residential buildings are estimated to generate about 40% more energy than the residences need. This is because most rooftop solar systems are set up to generate enough energy to power a house during winter when the demand is greatest – people run heaters and tumble driers – and sunlight is at its weakest.

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Read more:
Home solar systems in South Africa: more will be installed if households are given loans, free maintenance and security

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If these homes were fitted with bidirectional meters, which are already widely available, they could sell their unused solar power back to the grid.

Municipalities could also benefit by buying the excess renewable energy generated by homes and reselling it. In Cape Town alone, the city would generate an estimated R144 million (US$8.8 million) per year from doing this, equivalent to an additional 3% in profit, if the bidirectional meters were in place. At the same time, it would be supporting a more inclusive energy transition and reducing the amount of greenhouse gas produced by burning coal to generate power.

Vehicle-to-grid devices

My research also found that home solar systems could be integrated with battery electric vehicles using vehicle-to-grid devices. These are systems that allow batteries from electric vehicles to be integrated with electrical devices in a home (fridges, geysers and heaters) and with the national grid. In other words, electric vehicle owners would use their vehicle-to-grid device to sell power to the national grid.

This would benefit the grid and the vehicle owners, but most importantly would reduce the yearly costs of running an electric vehicle (the combined cost of the electricity the vehicle needs to run, the cost of the vehicle itself and the annual operating costs).

In practice, this would need electric car owners to charge their cars between 10am and 4pm every day when solar power generation is at its peak. This would mean that the car owners could subsidise their travel costs using “free” excess solar energy.

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Read more:
Electric vehicles in Africa: what’s needed to grow the sector

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This would be ideal for people who worked from home or used their vehicles for transport to and from work or school in the early morning and late afternoon. Charging stations at workplaces would also achieve this.

The vehicle battery (typically 40–100 kWh) could then be used by people to power their homes during peak night periods or sell energy back to the grid, while leaving sufficient energy in the battery for the morning travel. Again, this would offset the yearly costs of owning an electric vehicle and boost the national grid by peak shaving.

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Read more:
Battery swapping stations powered by solar and wind: we show how this could work for electric vehicles in South Africa

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If homeowners managed this well, by generating enough green energy and avoiding the use of energy from the grid, home and vehicle owners should be able to pay no more than they would if they were driving internal combustion engine vehicles that run on petrol, and using electricity from the national power utility, Eskom. In other words, switching to a renewable energy option would be possible without additional cost.

What needs to happen next

Net Zero by 2050 is not an aspiration of a small group of environmental activists; it is a legal obligation under South Africa’s Climate Change Act. Despite what climate change denialists may claim, it is not a preferred option – it is the only option.

Bidirectional meters and vehicle-to-grid charging stations would help the country reach this goal.

However, the question of who pays for home bidirectional meters, their installation and having them certified has become highly contested. I argue that the state-owned electricity provider, Eskom, and the municipalities should cover the cost of both registration and metering. It shouldn’t be paid by the homeowners.

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Read more:
Satellite images reveal the dark side of household solar power – South Africa’s green transition is only for a few

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This is because the benefit for electricity distributors is at least five times the cost of the meter itself. Distributors get cheap energy and sell it to other customers. The grid also benefits from having more renewable energy being fed into it.

Without technology like this, the cost of transitioning to a green energy future remains too high for individual households. But with the technology, the transition becomes economically competitive.

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