Gold Steals Silver's Limelight
Commodities / Gold and Silver 2010 Sep 07, 2010 - 07:17 AM GMTBy: Adrian_Ash
THE PRICE OF GOLD in wholesale dealing held in a tight range around last week's close as New York re-opened after the Labor Day holiday on Tuesday, trading at $1247 an ounce while European stock markets fell and government bonds rose.
Silver fell almost 2% from Monday's breach of $20 an ounce – a 30-month high previously hit in Nov. 1980.
"Each time a rise in gold hits the headlines, it steals the limelight from silver," says Ashraf Laidi at spread-betting firm CMC Markets, quoted today in the Financial Times.
"Silver has not only followed rallies in gold, but usually outperformed, as can be seen in a fall in the gold/silver ratio – the amount of gold that can be purchased with one ounce of silver."
Yesterday saw the gold/silver ratio fall towards a 12-month low beneath 63 on the London Fixes. Its four-decade average stands at 53 ounces of silver per ounce of gold.
The Euro meantime fell 1.5¢ from 3-week highs to the Dollar early on Tuesday after the Wall Street Journal accused last month's "banking stress tests" of excluding "a significant amount" of government-bond exposure amid the recent Greek deficit crisis.
European finance ministers meeting in Brussels last night agreed "on the need for credible sanctions" against governments that breach the union's debt and deficit limits, EU commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters.
But easing tensions over Greece's deficit have led to "a slight slackening of the dynamism" to fix the system, Germany's Wolfgang Schäuble warned.
"Despite concerns over the global economy, precious metals have also come under attack," says Walter de Wet, chief commodities analyst at Standard Bank, this morning.
"[But] while precious metals might be on the back foot for now, lingering uncertainty means the outlook for these metals still looks promising."
"Even though there's some liquidation in the gold ETF, everybody is still bullish," Reuters quotes Ronald Leung of Lee Cheong Gold Dealers in Hong Kong, after New York's SPDR Gold Trust reported a 0.4% drop in its physical holdings.
"There's so much uncertainty in the economy and the [Hindu] festive season is on and we expect to see buying at the lower end.
"I think the next target is the all-time high."
Overall last week, total global gold investment rose by more than 2.1% according to data compiled by London's VM Group consultancy, as a sharp rise in futures and options positions outweighed a slight fall in physically-backed ETF trusts.
In the US Comex gold futures market, "Gross longs in the large speculators' position have gone up by more than 1.5 million ounces [46 tonnes equivalent] in the past three weeks," says VM's weekly report for ABN Amro.
"On a rolling three-week basis, that's the largest advance [in speculative gold futures betting] since the same period ending 22 September 2009...when the gold price was just $1014 an ounce."
Silver investment worldwide last week showed a 6.3% rose on VM's analysis of ETF and futures positions.
Meantime in the stock market on Tuesday, European shares fell nearly 1% after Germany reported an unexpected drop in factory orders for July.
Ahead of Thursday's Bank of England policy meeting, the British Pound fell closer to last week's 1-month lows, buoying the gold price in Sterling above £810 an ounce.
Australian investors looking to buy gold today saw the price hold near A$1370 an ounce – some 11% below the record price of Jan. and May – after the central bank held its lending rate at 4.50%, the highest rate paid on a developed-world currency.
The Bank of Japan also held its key lending rate unchanged on Tuesday, sticking at 0.1% for the 20th month running after weighing a "moderate recovery" against the "possibility that inflation will rise more than expected" due to emerging-economy demand.
Refraining from any new forex-market or money-supply intervention, the BoJ repeated the same vow as the US and UK central banks to "take policy actions in a timely and appropriate manner if judged necessary."
By Adrian Ash
BullionVault.com
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Formerly City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London and a regular contributor to MoneyWeek magazine, Adrian Ash is the editor of Gold News and head of research at www.BullionVault.com , giving you direct access to investment gold, vaulted in Zurich , on $3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.
(c) BullionVault 2010
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