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Gold Prices Leap 4%, Post Biggest 1 Day Gain in 3 Years

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Gold prices rose sharply, gaining almost 4% on Friday as weak non-farms payroll data spooked investors’ concerns that world’s largest economy was ebbing amid global economic slowdown while expectations of another round of quantitative easing helped the metal to extend gains.

After falling in the earlier session, gold rebounded $60 an ounce towards the end as investors sought safe haven assets even as dollar tumbled and U.S. equities were hammered.


The SPDR Gold Trust (ETF) (NYSE: GLD) ended the day 3.88% higher at $157.50.

This week, gold climbed up 3.5%, a biggest weekly gain since January as spiraling debt crisis in the euro zone along with economic slowdown in emerging market heralded uncertainty over global economic outlook.

Spot gold touched a near two-week high of $1,629.41 an ounce and climbed up 3.9 percent at $1,624.20, its biggest one-day rally since January 2009.

U.S. gold futures settles higher  $57.90 at $1,620.50, with trading volume about 50 percent above its 30-day average, showed a preliminary data provided by Reuters.

Lately gold moved in tandem with riskier assets like crude oil and equities, however, the metal reversed this trend on Friday as tumultuous global economic environment weighed heavily on Brent crude oil prices, falling below $100 a barrel while Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling more than 2%.

The sudden surge in gold prices is very similar to the one in January when Fed hinted at possible QE3 and announced near zero percent interest rate until 2012- leading to a sharp rally in the bullion market with gains as high as 15 percent in February.

However, some strong U.S. economic indicators in March and April forced the Fed to employ a dovish stance on monetary easing, weighing heavily on the metal.

Commenting over this matter, Jeffrey Sherman, commodities portfolio manager of asset manager DoubleLine Capital which oversees $35 billion in assets, said to Reuters, “People are speculating that there will be some form of program coordinated by central banks, which is ultimately inflationary and gold catches a bid.”

Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York strongly believes QE3 is very much a possibility as he said to Reuters “ it is increasingly obvious that we are in the midst of a global economic slowdown. This puts the Fed firmly in play and they will likely feel compelled to respond.”

According to Rick Bensignor, chief market strategist of Merlin Securities, gold is forming a potential triple-bottom pattern dating back to last September-when it touched a record high at $1920 an ounce.

While gold ended May in red territory, continuing its slide for fourth successive month, Friday’s rebound helped metal to gain 4% year-to-date.

Speaking to Reuters, Robert Lutts- chief investment officer of Cabot Money Management with over $500 million in client assets- said “Larger institutions will commit money to gold in ways they never had before. We are talking about CALPERS, Yale and Harvard.”

Moving onto some other precious metal markets, spot silver gained 2.4 percent at $28.44 an ounce. Spot platinum leaped 2.2 percent at $1,440.24 an ounce, while spot palladium inched up 0.2 percent at $609.99 an ounce.








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edliston
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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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.

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