Gold News

Gold Price "Under Pressure" as Market Looks to US Jobs Data, Coin Buyers "Wait for New Drop"

GOLD PRICE gains of 1.1% from Friday were erased in Asian and London trade Monday morning, with the metal trading back below $1240 per ounce as world stock markets also slipped with commodities.
 
Silver tracked the gold price lower, falling from $20 per ounce at the start of Asian dealing to hit near 1-week lows $19.63.
 
The rising Pound meantime, touching its highest level since Sept.2011 after stronger-than-forecast UK house price and manufacturing data, pushed the gold price in Sterling down to new 3-year lows beneath £755 per ounce.
 
"We are looking for a push toward the [Dollar] range lows near $1180," says London market-maker Barclays in a note, pointing to the 3-year low in the gold price hit at end-June.
 
"It would take a break back above former range lows in the 1520 area to suggest any kind of a base developing...If equity markets remain firm and if prices breach $1200, the weakness is likely to be exacerbated."
 
"Many countries stock exchanges," Germany's Der Spiegel quotes economist and financial historian Robert Shiller, "are at a high level, and prices have risen sharply in some property markets.
 
"I am most worried about the boom in the US stock market...because our economy is still weak and vulnerable."
 
But looking ahead to Friday's US jobs data in the monthly Non-Farm Payrolls report, "as long as US economic data shows improvement, the probability of sooner-than-later tapering becomes more real," says chief investment strategist Wang Xiaoli at China brokerage CITICS Futures Co.
 
With officials from the US Federal Reserve saying again last week that better jobs data could spur them to cut the $85 billion of monthly quantitative easing in place since end-2012, "That should keep downward pressure on gold prices," reckons Wang.
 
Gold prices managed "something of a recovery at the end of last week," says one London trading desk in a note.
 
Friday's rally, reckons Edward Meir writing for US brokerage INTL FCStone, came "on news of political tensions emanating out of Asia," with China's airforce scrambling jets in response to Japanese and US flights over airspace claimed by the Communist state.
 
US vice president Biden is this week visiting China, Japan and South Korea.
 
Looking at the gold market, "Physical flows were limited last week with the Thanksgiving holiday," says a note from ANZ Bank, "but light physical related selling [was] seen above $1250 per ounce."
 
New data released Friday by the London Bullion Market Association showed the average daily volume of wholesale gold traded in October between the LBMA's clearing-member banks rising slightly from September.
 
Coming just shy of Oct. 2012 at 19.8 million ounces, however, that was the lowest October reading since 2010.
 
Last month saw sales of gold coins by leading bullion refiner the Perth Mint in Western Australia fall by one third, it said on its website.
 
Amid the drop in prices – the worst Dollar gold price drop since 1978 – "Evidently, some buyers still expect gold prices to fall even further," notes Commerzbank's commodity team, "and have thus been exercising restraint when it comes to purchasing coins."
 
With Google searches for the word "Bitcoin" rising 7-fold in the last month alone, the Financial Times reports that the UK's Royal Mint – currently state-owned – is considering "the possibility of manufacturing a physical commemorative coin with a Bitcoin theme."

Adrian Ash

Adrian Ash, BullionVault Gold News

Adrian Ash is director of research at BullionVault, the world-leading physical gold, silver and platinum market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and he has now been researching and writing daily analysis of precious metals and the wider financial markets for over 20 years. A frequent guest on BBC radio and television, Adrian is regularly quoted by the Financial Times, MarketWatch and many other respected news outlets, and his views from inside the bullion market have been sought by the Economist magazine, CNBC, Bloomberg, Germany's Handelsblatt and FAZ, plus Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore.

See the full archive of Adrian Ash articles on GoldNews.

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