Gold Jumps as Greece Debt Cut to "Junk" Status, Other Precious Metals Dive with Stocks, Crude Oil

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold traded mostly higher in Asia on Tuesday before it fell back off in London to see a loss of $7.45 at $1146.00 an ounce by about 09:00 ET.

The Gold Price in Euros then leapt to new all-time highs above €880 an ounce as the single currency fell on news that Greek government debt was downgraded by the credit rating agencies to "junk" status. Portugal's debt rating was already lowered.

Gold in Dollars shot to a new session high of $1164.40 by late morning in New York, seeing a gain of $10.95 an ounce, but it fell back off into the close and ended with a gain of 0.7%.

Silver fell to $18.06 and rose to $18.397 before it fell off rather markedly in the last couple of hours of trade and ended near its late session low of $18.025 with a loss of 1.1%.

Both gold and Silver Prices then rose in after-hours access trade.

Oil fell as the US Dollar index and Treasuries rose. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P lost about 2% on the day. Tuesday's auction of 2-year US debt drew a high yield of 1.024% with a bid to cover of 3.03 times.

US home prices on the Case-Shiller index crept just 0.7% higher in Feb., new data showed, not quite reversing Jan.'s fall and missing Wall Street expectations.

Consumer Confidence, in contrast, rose sharply this month.

Wednesday at 14:15 ET brings the latest Federal Reserve monetary policy announcement, expected to keep the fed funds rate in its record low range of 0.00% to 0.25% "for an extended period."

Platinum lost $24 to $1714, and copper fell over 16 cents to about $3.36.

Gold Mining and silver equities fell over 1% at the open before they rallied to see slight gains by late morning and then fell back off again to see over 1% losses by early afternoon, but they rallied back higher in the last few hours of trade and ended mixed and near unchanged.

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