Gold price heads for best monthly gain since 2008
New York (Feb 26) Gold is heading for the best monthly gain in four years as concerns over global economic growth spur demand for haven assets. Those same worries explain why silver and other precious metals aren’t faring as well. Spot bullion’s 11 per cent surge this month means an ounce of the metal now buys about 82 ounces of silver, the highest since 84.5 ounces in 2008 during the global financial crisis. An ounce of gold bought 2.6 ounces of palladium yesterday, the most in more than three years. Gold has been the beneficiary as financial-market turmoil, declining crude oil prices and signs of a weakening Chinese economy vex investors, boosting speculation that the Federal Reserve will be slow to raise US interest rates further.
At the same time. the prospect of a slump in manufacturing demand has reduced the appeal of silver, which gets about of its half of demand from industrial fabrication. “Silver is half precious metal half industrial metal, and it hasn’t been the safety play that gold has,” James Cordier, the founder of Optionsellers.com in Tampa, Florida, said in a telephone interview. “Gold certainly has done extremely well with uncertainty around the world and with the idea that interest rates wont be rising. Until global growth comes up, the gold-silver ratio will continue to widen.” Gold for immediate delivery climbed 0.8 per cent to US$1,238.47 (RM5226.22) an ounce at 11.36am in New York. The metal is up 17 per cent this year. Spot silver, down 0.6 per cent yesterday, has advanced 9.6 per cent this year, while palladium has lost 14 per cent. Last week, the OECD cut its global growth forecasts, saying the economies of Brazil, Germany and the US are slowing and warning that some emerging markets are at risk of exchange-rate volatility. Holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded products rose 10 metric tonnes to 1,676.2 tonnes as of Wednesday, the highest in a year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Investors are now buying the metal on dips, rather than selling on rallies as they had done in previous years, Georgette Boele, an Amsterdam-based strategist at ABN Amro Bank NV, said by e-mail. She earlier this month switched her gold outlook to bullish from bearish because of a more pessimistic view on the global economy. Spot platinum slipped 0.9 per cent to US$929.28 an ounce. The metal has climbed 4.2 per cent in 2016. The BI Global Gold Mining Competitive Peer Group of 44 producers advanced 0.2 per cent yesterday. The index rose 38 per cent this year.
Source: Bloomberg
