Gold investors were handed a boost on Saturday (January 11th) as a major Canadian bank upped its gold price forecasts for both 2009 and 2010, Mineweb reports.

CIBC World Markets has increased its prediction for this year to $950 per ounce from the previous estimate of $900 per ounce, while also offering a figure of $1,050 per ounce for next year.

Explaining the company's decision in a recent report, metals analysts Barry Cooper, Brian Quast and Cosmos Chin noted that gold prices should have been pushed higher by a number of macro-economic factors last year.

Quoted by the news provider, they wrote: "The events of 2008 should have pushed gold to higher levels than $1,000 per ounce in our opinion.

"[Gold did] what every insurance policy does; it maintained the owner's wealth and certainly outperformed all other commodities during the crisis."

The events listed by the analysts are the collapse of top US mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddic Mac, numerous bank failures, the bailout of the 'Big Three' US automakers and the property market crisis.

The view that 2009 will prove to be a beneficial year for anyone with a gold investment was also expressed last week by Matthew Turner, an analyst at VM Group.

"Everyone is saying that it's a good year for gold," he commented in an interview with MiningMX.

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