rises

Published on
21/01/2026 – 12:09 GMT+1

Gold soared to another record high on Wednesday, surpassing $4,800 per ounce, as leaders in Davos await the arrival of US President Donald Trump at the Swiss summit.

While the EU and US continue to clash over Trump’s plans to acquire Greenland, the precious metal has risen over 2% — with investors looking for a safe place to park their money amid renewed tariff threats. Silver prices, meanwhile, notched up 0.44% to $95.055.

“You’ll have to find out,” Trump said on Tuesday when asked how far he was willing to go to acquire Greenland. The US has failed to rule out military intervention, and is proposing extra tariffs on eight European countries if they fail to comply with his demands over the island.

After a record-breaking 2025, analysts remain optimistic about gold’s trajectory for 2026 as US interest rates fall, the dollar weakens, and central banks continue to add to their gold reserves.

When the greenback falls in value, this makes gold comparatively cheaper for foreign buyers and therefore drives up demand and prices.

Low US interest rates also increase gold’s appeal compared to interest-bearing assets, as investors aren’t significantly losing out if they choose the metal over assets like bonds.

Dollar dominance

Investors are betting that the next Federal Reserve chair, who will replace Jerome Powell when his term ends in May, will be more dovish than his predecessor — meaning they will be more focused on lowering interest rates than taming inflation risks.

The candidate will be nominated by President Trump, who has heavily criticised Powell for his cautious approach to policy easing over the last year.

Although central banks have been reducing their dependency on the dollar in favour of gold, experts stress that the greenback will not be usurped as the world’s reserve currency anytime soon, with the currency still making up roughly 57% of total central bank reserves. Even so, the greenback could see a gradual erosion of its status if US policy decisions continue to undermine its stability.

“We are taking the view that the dollar has some room to recover today,” said ING analysts in a note on Wednesday. They emphasised that a decline in the dollar a day earlier was linked to instability in the Japanese bond market, as well as fears that Europeans might start selling their US Treasury holdings.

“Japanese bonds have rebounded… and with Trump headed to Davos, we see some scope for de-escalation on the Greenland risk and fears of European dumping of US assets,” said ING analysts.

The Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against six other currencies, traded less than 0.1% higher on Wednesday after falling on Tuesday.

Turning to stocks, Europe’s major indexes again found themselves in the red on Wednesday after two days of losses.

France’s CAC 40 had dropped 0.18% by around 11:30 CET, Germany’s DAX was down 0.68%, and Spain’s IBEX 35 lost 0.53%. Italy’s FTSE MIB was down 0.68%, the UK’s FTSE 100 slid less than 0.1%, while the broader STOXX Europe 500 tumbled 0.35%.

Ahead of the opening bell in the US, S&P 500 futures rose 0.34%, Dow Jones futures jumped 0.13%, and Nasdaq futures increased 0.19%.

Jan. 20 (Asia Today) — Bank deposits in South Korea are falling sharply as investors shift cash toward the stock market during the KOSPI’s rally, raising concerns in the financial sector about an accelerating “money move,” industry data showed Tuesday.

Demand deposits at the five major banks – KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank, Hana Bank, Woori Bank and NH Nonghyup Bank – totaled 673.9145 trillion won ($455.6 billion), down 4.99% from the end of last month, a decline of 35.3973 trillion won ($23.9 billion), the financial sector said.

Time deposits also edged lower, slipping to 938.2555 trillion won ($634.3 billion) from 939.2863 trillion won ($635.0 billion) in December.

Market participants attributed the outflows to a shift into securities-related cash, including investor deposits – standby funds used directly for stock purchases – and cash management accounts.

Investor deposits rose to 91.2182 trillion won ($61.7 billion) as of Friday from 77.912 trillion won ($52.7 billion) at the end of November, the data showed. Cash management account balances climbed to 102.9779 trillion won ($69.6 billion) from 98.0722 trillion won ($66.3 billion) over the same period.

The increase in investor deposits has tracked the KOSPI’s gains, the report said. Investor deposits hovered near 60 trillion won ($40.6 billion) in June last year when the index was around 2,000, then topped 80 trillion won ($54.1 billion) on Oct. 13. As the KOSPI resumed a steady rise in January and touched 5,000, investor deposits moved above 90 trillion won ($60.8 billion), reaching 92.8537 trillion won ($62.8 billion) on Jan. 8.

Banks revived deposit products paying interest in the 3% range in the second half of last year, but they are facing competition from alternatives such as integrated investment accounts known as IMAs, introduced in December, the report said.

The IMA products are marketed as offering principal protection if funds are held to maturity while targeting returns above 4%, the report said. About 220 billion won ($149 million) flowed into one product on its first day, it added.

A banking industry official said the reappearance of 3% deposit products reflects an attempt to respond to the money move. The official said the decline in time deposits remains modest, but banks are monitoring the trend closely.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

European markets opened lower on Monday as threats from US President Donald Trump reignited a trade war with traditional allies across the Atlantic.

At around 10am CET, France’s CAC 40 had slipped 1.28%, Germany’s DAX was down 1.02%, and the UK’s FTSE 100 dropped 0.27%. Spain’s IBEX 35 fell 0.59% and Italy’s FTSE MIB slid 1.43%. Meanwhile, the wider STOXX 600 fell 0.87%.

European leaders will meet this week to decide how best to respond to threats from US President Donald Trump to acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Washington announced on Saturday that eight European countries would face a 10% tariff on their US exports from 1 February unless they support the US’ proposal to purchase Greenland. This rate will rise to 25% in June if no deal is reached.

Specifically, the threat targets Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland.

Standing firm in their support for Greenland’s right to self-determination and Denmark’s sovereignty, EU member states are weighing their options. One possibility is the use of retaliatory tariffs on €93bn of US goods, a measure that was floated then abandoned last year during an earlier trade stand-off with Washington. Another proposal includes the activation of an anti-coercion tool, which enables the EU to impose punitive economic measures on a country seeking to force a policy change.

Shares in European carmakers saw a significant drop on Monday morning, with the STOXX Europe 600 Automobiles & Parts Index falling more than 2% and hitting a 52-week low. BMW shares were down 4.10% at just after 10am CET, while Volvo and Volkswagen were down 2.21% and 3.43% respectively.

Europe’s luxury goods sector also opened lower, with the STOXX Europe Luxury 10 dropping almost 3%.

On the other hand, safe haven assets such as gold and silver hit new highs as investors moved away from riskier assets such as crypto. Bullion neared $4,700 an ounce on Monday, climbing over 1.66%, and silver prices crossed the $94 threshold.

Defence stocks also rallied in Europe, with the STOXX Europe aerospace and defence index up 0.49%. Thales rose 2.41%, Rheinmetall was up 2.89%, Leonardo shares jumped 3.05%, and BAE systems rose 1.77%.

Markets in Asia also saw a downturn. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.65%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.05%, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.33%. Korea’s Kospi and China’s SSE Composite Index both bucked the trend, closing higher.

US markets are closed today for the Martin Luther King public holiday, but S&P futures slid around 1.18%.

As of around 10am CET, the dollar had fallen 0.21% against the euro.

With last summer’s trade deal between the US and the EU hanging in the balance, investors will be focused on further announcements from the two trading powers.

“The flare-up over Greenland and the threat of renewed tariffs are very unwelcome for European industry. This comes at a time when industrial sentiment has finally started to rise, with businesses seemingly having learnt to live with last year’s tariff volatility,” said analysts from ING.

“These developments will focus European minds on the need to generate domestic demand and potentially even push through sluggish reforms such as the Savings and Investment Union, to allow Europe’s capital markets to better compete with those of the US,” they added.

Markets will also be tracking announcements coming from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which starts this week. Trump will address the Forum on Wednesday.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric ‍has announced a ‍state of emergency in two southern regions.

Two dozen active forest fires are tearing across southern Chile, forcing more than 50,000 people to flee their homes and killing at least 16 people, authorities have said.

Security Minister Luis Cordero told reporters at a press conference on Sunday that 15 deaths had been confirmed in the Biobio region, bringing the total to 16 after ‌the government previously reported one death in Nuble.

Biobio and Nuble – central-southern regions located about 500km (300 mi) south of the capital, Santiago – have faced the blazes’ worst effects.

President Gabriel Boric declared a state of emergency in both regions earlier on Sunday, writing on X that “all resources are available” to contain the fires. The declaration allowed Chile’s armed forces to start pitching in.

The majority of the evacuations have taken place in the cities of Penco and Lirquen, located in Biobio, authorities said. Together, the cities are home to around 60,000 people.

Interior Minister Alvaro Elizalde said unfavourable weather conditions in the coming days – particularly extreme temperatures – were expected to make firefighting efforts more difficult.

“We face a complicated situation,” he added.

The fires have torched around 85sq km (33sq mi) across Biobio and Nuble, prompting the mass evacuations. At least 250 homes have been destroyed so far.

South-central Chile has been battered by forest fires in recent years, with simultaneous blazes in February 2024 leading to the deaths of more than 130 people.

At the time, Boric called it the “greatest tragedy” the Latin American country had faced since a 2010 earthquake that killed at least 500 people.

Israeli raids cause rising casualties in Gaza, as attacks persist despite the ceasefire agreement.

Sapang Kawayan, Philippines – Two hours north of the capital, Manila, on the vast grounds of a former United States military base, the Philippine government is pushing ahead with plans for a multibillion-dollar “smart city” that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr hopes to turn into a future “mecca for tourists” and a “magnet for investors”.

The New Clark City, which is being built on the former Clark Air Base, is central to the government’s effort to attract foreign investment and ease congestion in Manila, where nearly 15 million people live.

To accompany the city’s development, the government has also laid out an ambitious slate of projects at a nearby airport complex — new train lines, expanded airport runways, and a $515m stadium that officials hope will be enticing enough to draw the global pop singer Taylor Swift.

Caught between the rising new city and the site of the proposed stadium lies the Indigenous Aeta village of Sapang Kawayan. For the roughly 500 families who live there, in houses of nipa grass and rattan, the developments spell disaster.

“We were here before the Americans, even before the Spanish,” said Petronila Capiz, 60, the chieftain of the Aeta Hungey tribe in Sapang Kawayan. “And the land continues to be taken from us.”

Historians say American colonisers, who seized the Philippines from Spain in 1898, took over the 32,000-hectare (80,000-acre) tract that became Clark Air Base in the 1920s, dispossessing the Aetas, a seminomadic and dark-skinned people thought to be among the archipelago’s earliest inhabitants.

Many were displaced, though some moved deeper into the jungle inside the base and were employed as labourers.

The US turned over the base to the Philippine government in 1991, some four decades after granting the country independence. Since then, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, or BCDA, has managed the complex. Some 20,000 Aetas are thought to remain in the Clark area today, spread across 32 villages.

But most of their claims to the land are not recognised.

In Sapang Kawayan, residents fear the government’s development boom means they could be pushed out long before they can establish such claims. The community – along with other Aeta villages in Clark – is working with researchers from the University of the Philippines to expedite a long-pending application for a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title, or CADT — the only legal mechanism that would allow them to assert rights to their territory and its resources.

In January, July and September, Aetas young and old gathered under makeshift wooden shelters in Sapang Kawayan, assembling family trees and sharing stories and photographs. Volunteers documented each detail in hopes of demonstrating that the community there predates colonial rule.

Their 17,000-hectare claim overlaps with nearly all of the 9,450 hectares designated for New Clark City, while 14 kilometres to the south is the airport complex where the new railway line, runway and stadium are slated to rise.

Together, the new city and airport complex “will eat up the fields where we farm, the rivers where we fish and the mountains where we get our herbs”, Capiz said.

‘Taylor Swift-ready’

The Philippine government first announced plans for New Clark City under then-President Rodrigo Duterte, promoting it as a solution to the crippling congestion in Metro Manila. The BCDA describes the development as a “green, smart and disaster-resilient metropolis”.

Construction began in 2018 with major roads and a sports complex that hosted the Southeast Asian Games in 2019.

Designed to accommodate 1.2 million people, the city is expected to take at least 30 years to complete.

The BCDA is now building three highways linking New Clark City to the airport complex, where the “Taylor Swift–ready” stadium is planned. Officials have hyped that the stadium, to be built by 2028, will lure Swift after she skipped the Philippines during the South Asian leg of her Eras tour last year.

“One of the main elements that make Clark so attractive to investors is its unmatched connectivity,” the BCDA’s president, Joshua Bingcang, said this year, citing the airport, a nearby seaport and major expressways. “But we need to further build on this connectivity and invest more in infrastructure.”

That expansion has come at a cost for Aeta communities.

Counter-Mapping PH, a research organisation, and campaigners estimate that hundreds of Aeta families have been displaced since construction of the city began, including dozens of families who were given just a week in 2019 to “voluntarily” vacate ahead of the Southeast Asian Games.

They warn that thousands more could be uprooted as development continues.

The BCDA has offered financial compensation of $0.51 per square metre as well as resettlement for affected families. In July, it broke ground on 840 housing units, though it is unclear whether they are intended for displaced Aetas.

The agency maintains that no displacement has occurred because Aetas have no proven legal claim to the area. In a statement to Al Jazeera, the BCDA said it “upholds the welfare and rights of Indigenous peoples” and acknowledges their “long historical presence” in central Luzon, where Clark is located. However, it noted that Clark’s boundaries follow “long-established government ownership” dating to the US military base, and that the New Clark City does not encroach on any recognised ancestral domains.

The BCDA also contended that it is the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) that deals with the applications for a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title, and stressed that it respected “lands awarded to Indigenous peoples”.

The Clark International Airport Corporation, which oversees the airport complex, offered similar assurances, stating that “there are no households or communities existing in the said location”. The group added that while the extended Clark area has Aeta communities, none exist within the airport complex itself.

‘Since time immemorial’

Only a handful of Aeta tribes have been awarded CADTs.

Two certificates have been granted on the outskirts of Clark, while the application filed by Sapang Kawayan and other villages inside the base have languished since 1986.

Marcial Lengao, head of NCIP’s Tarlac office, told Al Jazeera that to grant Aetas in Clark a CADT they must “prove that they have been there since time immemorial”, meaning, during or before the arrival of the Spanish colonisers to the archipelago 400 years ago.

The commission, he said, specifies minimum requirements for a CADT: a genealogy of at least five clans dating back at least three generations or to the precolonial period, testimonies from elders, a map of the domain and a census of the current population.

Lengao said Sapang Kawayan’s application has yet to complete these.

But even if the application is granted, the village faces another unique hurdle. Because the BCDA owns land rights to Clark, any CADT approved by the commission in the area must then be deliberated by the executive branch or the president’s office.

“They will be responsible for finding a win-win solution,” Lengao said.

Activists, however, denounced the NCIP’s requirements as onerous and warned that the longer Aetas remain without a CADT, the more vulnerable they are to losing their lands.

“Without a CADT and without genuine recognition from the government, the Aetas will continue to be treated like squatters on their own land,” said Pia Montalban of Karapatan-Central Luzon, a local rights group.

‘Among the most abused Indigenous Filipinos’

The Aetas, who rely on small-scale subsistence farming, are among the most historically disenfranchised Indigenous peoples in the Philippines. No official data exists on the Aeta population, but the government believes them to be a small subset of the Philippines’s Indigenous peoples, numbering in the tens of thousands nationwide.

The Aeta Tribe Foundation describes them as among the “poorest and least educated” groups in the nation.

“They are among the most abused Indigenous Filipinos,” said Jeremiah Silvestre, an Indigenous psychology expert who worked closely with Aeta communities until 2022 while teaching at the Tarlac State University. “Partly because of their good-natured culture, many have taken advantage of Aetas. Worse, they live off a land that is continuously taken from them.”

Silvestre, too, described the CADT process as “unnecessarily academic”, saying it required Indigenous elders to present complete genealogies and detailed maps to government officials in what he likened to “defending your dissertation”.

Changes in government personnel can restart the entire process, he noted.

A World Bank report last year found that Indigenous peoples in the Philippines “often face insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles in their efforts to process CADTs”. The report called recognising and protecting Indigenous land rights a “crucial step in addressing poverty and conflict”.

For the families of Sapang Kawayan, experts fear the lack of formal recognition could lead to displacement and homelessness.

“There’s no safety net,” Silvestre said. “We may see more Aetas begging on the street if this continues. Systemic poverty will also mean the loss of an Indigenous culture.”

Victor Valantin, an Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative for Tarlac Province, which includes parts of Clark, fears that the territory for the Aetas in the former base is shrinking as the new projects accelerate.

“We’ll have to move and move,” he said. “Shopping centres won’t move for us.”

Valantin went on to lament what he sees as a familiar imbalance.

“BCDA projects happen so fast,” he said. “But anything for us will be awfully slow.”

Dec. 26 (Asia Today) — Hanwha Group is positioning itself as a central player in the United States’ drive to revive its shipbuilding industry, with its Philadelphia shipyard emerging as a key operational base for Washington’s plan to restore naval power under President Donald Trump’s so-called “Golden Fleet” initiative.

Hanwha hosted a media day on Dec. 22 at its Hanwha Philly Shipyard in Pennsylvania, showcasing not just facilities but what executives described as a ready-to-execute platform aligned with U.S. national strategy to rebuild shipbuilding capacity and strengthen naval forces.

The significance of the site was underscored the same day when Trump publicly announced his Golden Fleet vision – aimed at countering China’s expanding naval power – and explicitly cited cooperation with South Korean conglomerate Hanwha. Trump recalled that during World War II, the United States built more than four ships a day on average, vowing to restore that capability.

Industry officials say the Philadelphia shipyard represents the point where political ambition meets practical execution.

Tom Anderson, head of shipbuilding at Hanwha Defense USA, said the shipyard should be seen not as a future possibility but as a fully prepared asset. The Golden Fleet concept centers on large, potentially nuclear-capable platforms and advanced surface vessels, while also elevating domestic production capacity as a political priority.

Rather than limiting cooperation to a single frigate program, Anderson said Hanwha is targeting the U.S. Navy’s core platform – the Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine. “Hanwha Philly Shipyard has the capability to build nuclear-powered submarines,” he said, stressing that readiness extends beyond any single model to the entire class of nuclear-propulsion platforms.

The U.S. Navy currently requires two submarines per year but produces only about 1.2 due to capacity bottlenecks. To address this gap, Anderson proposed leveraging proven designs instead of starting from scratch, applying South Korea’s shipbuilding expertise in shortening construction timelines to the Virginia-class framework.

Acknowledging the complexity of nuclear submarine construction, Anderson outlined key prerequisites: workforce expansion, deployment of skilled Korean technicians, recruitment of personnel with Virginia-class experience, and close coordination with the U.S. Navy’s Naval Reactors program.

On the sensitive issue of nuclear material control, Anderson drew clear boundaries. “The reactor compartment is provided by the U.S. government,” he said, adding that strict safeguards and procedures for nuclear material management are already in place. Hanwha, he said, would comply with the same standards applied to all U.S. nuclear-submarine shipyards.

Questions at the briefing focused on timing. While declining to commit to a specific schedule, Anderson emphasized Hanwha’s readiness to move quickly once government decisions are made. “We fully recognize the urgency of submarine production,” he said.

Supply-chain resilience also emerged as a key theme. Anderson said Hanwha plans to integrate South Korea’s robust shipbuilding supply network to stabilize schedules and accelerate delivery, while maintaining the principle of “Made in the USA” production. In effect, Korean suppliers would serve as the arteries supporting U.S.-built vessels.

Cho Jong-woo, head of Hanwha Philly Shipyard, said expanded shipbuilding in the United States would allow Korean component makers and partner firms to enter global supply chains and grow alongside the U.S. naval buildup.

As Washington seeks to turn shipbuilding revival from slogan into strategy, Hanwha’s U.S. foothold is increasingly viewed as a critical pillar in rebuilding America’s maritime power.

–Copyright by Asiatoday