Gold Prices Edge Higher; Silver Prices Slip
Gold prices edged higher in trading on Friday as monetary easing measures announced by global central banks, including the Federal Reserve, lifted the precious metal’s appeal as an inflation hedge. Silver prices, meanwhile, edged lower on Friday.
Last week, the Federal Reserve launched an aggressive bond buying program, popularly called QE3, to boost economic growth. The Fed said that it would purchase $40 billion of mortgage-backed debt every month, until there is a significant improvement in the labor market. The Fed’s move came a few days after the European Central Bank (ECB) announced a bond buying program to contain the euro zone debt crisis.
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) joined the Fed and the ECB this week by implementing further easing measures to support the Japanese economy. The BOJ announced earlier this week that it is expanding its asset purchase program to boost economic growth.
With global central banks adopting more accommodative monetary policies, there is increasing risk of future inflation, and hence investors are moving into gold.
Speaking to Reuters, Pradeep Unni, Senior Analyst at Richcomm Global Services, said that with the open-ended scheme to print as much dollars as needed until the U.S. economy recovers, gold’s uptrend has fewer barricades on the way at least to earlier highs.
Spot gold rose 0.4% to $1,774.41 an ounce on Friday. Gold futures for delivery in December on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange were up $7.20 to $1,775 an ounce, at last check on Friday.
Silver prices edged lower on Friday. At last check, spot silver was down 0.14% to $34.54 an ounce.
In late trading on Friday, the iShares Silver Trust (ETF) (NYSE: SLV) was down 0.21%, the ProShares Ultra Silver (ETF) (NYSE: AGQ) was down 0.25% to $58.76, and the ProShares UltraShort Silver (ETF) (NYSE: ZSL) was up 0.30% to $40.16.
Platinum and palladium edged higher on Friday. At last check, spot platinum was trading 0.7% higher at $1,631.99 an ounce, while spot palladium was trading 1.2% higher at $667.75 an ounce.
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Post Written By: Ed Liston
Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.
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