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Gold Prices Soar 6.3% on Week and Top $1880, Silver Jumps 8.5% to Above $42
U.S. gold futures jumped to a record above $1,800 an ounce Friday, extending its streak of record settlements to four sessions, its string of wins to five days and its successive weekly gains to seven.
Gold prices surged 6.3 percent this week, supported by global economic fears which pounded stocks and drove investors toward safe-haven buys like gold.
“Gold is driven by the uncertainty about a new global recession … and the possibility that Europe will engage in additional quantitative easing,” Reuters quotes James Dailey, portfolio manager of TEAM Financial Asset Management, which oversees $200 million in assets. “While an expected correction could be violent, I don’t think it may last too long.”
On Friday, December gold prices surged $30.20, or 1.7 percent, to close at a new record high of $1,852.20 an ounce on the Comex in New York. Gold prices ranged from $1,824.50 and $1,881.40 — also an intraday record high. The yellow metal has Read more…
Venezuela to Nationalize Gold Industry
President Hugo Chávez says he plans to take over Venezuela’s largely underdeveloped gold mining industry in an attempt to boost international reserves, reports WSJ.
Chávez has already nationalized banks, telecommunications, oil fields, the power sector, and hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.
Speaking on state television via telephone, Chávez said he would introduce a new Read more…
Why is George Soros selling gold and buying farmland?
(NaturalNews) Food prices are skyrocketing all across the globe, and there’s no end in sight. The United Nations says food inflation is currently at 30% a year, and the fast-eroding value of the dollar is causing food prices to appear even higher (in contrast to a weakening currency). As the dollar drops in value due to runaway money printing at the Federal Reserve, the cost to import foods from other nations looks to double in just the next two years — and possibly every two years thereafter.
That’s probably why investors around the globe are flocking to farmland as the new growth industry. “Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar,” reports Bloomberg magazine (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…). “A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.”
Jim Rogers is also quoted in the same story, saying, “I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland.”
That’s because demand for food is accelerating even as Read more…
Think gold is high? Wait till dollar bonds are dumped, Davies says
The West is close to the point where its paper currency system is insolvent, and as a result gold is heading to $5,000 an ounce, according to the manager of a gold fund.
“A paper currency system ultimately ends in insolvency,” said Ben Davies, the chief executive of Hinde Capital in an interview with CNBC.com on Tuesday. “We have arrived at this point in the West. So why own worthless paper?”
His belief that gold will hit $5,000 an ounce is not shared by many major players in the market. On Sunday, Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month price target for gold to $1,860 an ounce. In early trading Tuesday, spot gold hit a record $1,778 an ounce, before pulling back.
Goldman based its new target on Read more…
Gold/Silver Ratio Heads Back Up: Trend Might Continue Without QE3
I previously heralded silver’s breakout above $40, as well as gold’s breakout above $1600, as the dawning of the next leg up for precious metals — one that would send silver past its previous high of above $49 reached earlier this year. I still believe that silver will find its way well into triple digits in the coming years, as monetary demand from the global sovereign debt crisis is only escalating and will be the primary driver of silver’s price, but I’m not so sure it will happen imminently; in light of the tumultuous events of this past week, I’ve taken off some of my silver positions in exchange for gold instead. My rationale is as follows:
1. Because of its industrial role — silver is used to create a wide variety of goods, such as warfare weapons and solar panels — silver is more associated with risk. If we see the return of the bear market in equities like we saw in 2008, silver is going to get hit harder than gold.
2. I expected the gold/silver ratio to fall below 40 and approach its previous low of 33. Instead, we saw a bounce off 40. I still believe that silver will unofficially be re-monetized, and that this process will Read more…
Gold passes $1,700 an Ounce
The price of gold topped $1,700 an ounce Sunday evening as fears of a global economic meltdown intensified.
According to the Times of India, “An unprecedented downgrade to the US credit rating sent investors scrambling out of riskier assets, hammering equity markets and the dollar. US gold futures touched an intraday high at $1,702.7 an ounce, while cash gold, which hit its 11th record in 19 sessions, could rise further if pledges by the Group of Seven nations to support battered financial markets fail to bear fruit.”
The Times reported, “The one notch downgrade by Standard & Poor’s of the US long-term rating on Friday added to the threat of contagion from the euro debt crisis, fears over recession in the United States and even the possibility of Read more…
Central Banks Continue Buying Gold To Diversify Portfolios
Gold purchases by South Korea and Thailand this summer continue a trend in which central banks are net purchasers of the metal as they look to diversify their foreign-exchange reserves.
“So far in 2011, central banks in the emerging markets have already bought more than double the gold they bought in all of 2010, and we’ve got almost five months to go for the rest of the year,” said Jeff Clark, senior precious-metals analyst with Casey Research.
This buying has occurred despite historically high prices. “So apparently, central banks don’t regard the gold price as too high,” Clark said.
For the year to date, net purchases by the world’s central banks are 203.5 metric tons, which already is a 168% increase from 76 tons for all of 2010, said Natalie Dempster, director, government affairs, with the World Gold Council.
Most of the data is gleamed international financial statistics released by the International Monetary Fund at the beginning of each month. Additionally, some central banks—such as Read more…
Gold Prices Spike on Safe-Haven Appeal, South Korea Buy to $1660.10
NEW YORK (TheStreet ) — Gold prices hit record highs Tuesday as the Bank of Korea bought more gold and as the Senate passed the debt ceiling deal.
Gold for December delivery popped $22.80 to close at $1,644.50 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price has traded as high as $1,646.80 and as low as $1,618.80 while the spot gold price was skyrocketing almost $30, according to Kitco’s gold index.
Silver prices added 78 cents to close at $40.09 an ounce. The U.S. dollar index was up 0.22% at $74.48 while the euro was down 0.36% vs. the dollar.
With the debt-ceiling issue basically behind U.S. markets, investors are now looking at the health of the economy and the picture isn’t bright. Worries of slowing global growth were the main factors boosting gold prices.
Not only have quarterly growth numbers been anemic and July’s manufacturing index was barely above the critical 50 growth-mark, but the debt plan aims to Read more…
The Imminent $2.5 Trillion Debt Ceiling Hike Will Unleash A Gold Price Surge To $1,950 And Higher
Two weeks ago we presented a chart that shows the uncanny correlation between the debt ceiling and the price of gold. Now that we know the final amount of the next debt ceiling hike, somewhere in the $2.5 trillion ballpark, it allows us to extrapolate where gold will end up as a result of the debt ceiling hike which will likely be voted into law at 7pm PDT. A simple correlation rule of thumb allows us to predict that gold will be at $1,950 by the end of the year if it simply retains it close correlation to the debt ceiling. Should Bernanke announce that he will additionally need to monetize some or all of this incremental debt amount, we anticipate that gold will be well over $2,000 by the end of the year, courtesy of yet another round of accelerated dollar debasement, which also means that real gains in US stocks will be negated courtesy of the devaluation of the currency in which they are priced. The same, however, does not apply for gold, which with every passing day is priced in nothing but itself.
The Bloomberg chart of the day first presented on July 20.
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
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