Gold traded near a 16-week high in New York as investors weighed turmoil in Ukraine against the outlook for slowing bullion demand at higher prices.
Ukraine’s Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov pushed back a parliamentary vote on a national unity government to Feb. 27 from today as he attempts to win agreement with protest leaders who orchestrated last week’s ouster of Viktor Yanukovych. Physical demand for gold from Asia is “muted,” Standard Bank Group Ltd. said in a report yesterday.
After slumping the most since 1981 last year, gold is set for the first back-to-back monthly increase since August as data that trailed estimates fueled concern the U.S. recovery may be faltering. Prices gained even as the Federal Reserve lowered its bond-buying program by $10 billion a month in January and again in February, reducing the purchases to $65 billion.
“We have noticed fresh interest in bullion in light of the intensifying unrest in Ukraine,” James Steel, an analyst at HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., wrote in a report e-mailed late yesterday. “While paper investment demand for bullion has improved, we have noticed a slowing in physical demand.”
Gold for April delivery was little changed at $1,336.90 on the Comex in New York by 8:27 a.m. Futures reached $1,339.20 yesterday, the highest since Oct. 31. Futures trading volume was about average for the past 100 days for this time of day, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. Bullion for immediate delivery was little changed at $1,337.66 in London.
via Bloomberg
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Alfonso Esparza
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
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