Gold prices made steady progress last year and have continued that with a very strong start to this year, said George Milling-Stanley, chief gold strategist at State Street Global Advisors. That has led to April gold’s settlement at $3,001.10 an ounce on Comex Friday, the highest most-active contract finish on record.
Source – Market Watch
Gold prices edged up on Friday, poised for a weekly gain on safe-haven inflows and a U.S. jobs report revealing lower than expected job growth in February, suggesting the Federal Reserve is on track to cut interest rates this year.
Spot gold added 0.3% to $2,918.11 an ounce as of 09:24 (1424 GMT). Bullion has gained over 2% so far this week, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s ever-shifting tariff policies fanned uncertainty.
“Weaker than expected number is giving gold a slight boost… also a weaker dollar for the week right now is helping,” said Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist at RJO Futures.
Spot silver fell 1% to $32.28 an ounce and platinum shed 0.1% to $965.58, while palladium edged 0.5% up to $946.
Source – Reuters
Under this agreement, Hudbay will subscribe for 11,852,064 common shares of Arizona Sonoran at C$1.68 per share.
Arizona Sonoran president and CEO George Ogilvie said: “We are pleased and appreciative to welcome this further endorsement of our project and the go-forward plan by the team at Hudbay. It is the company’s objective to develop Cactus to be a significant producer of copper cathodes for direct use by industry in the state of Arizona and the larger US supply chain.
“We welcome Hudbay, a mid-tier base metal producer with decades of base metal successes in the Americas and a strong existing footprint in Arizona, as a larger and increasingly engaged shareholder, able to lend its experience and expertise as we advance and develop Cactus.”
Source – Global Data
Prices of platinum, a white precious metal, have rallied over 30% this year to date, with spot prices currently around $1,200 per ounce. Spot gold prices are around 27% higher over the same period.
“Rising gold prices are incentivising jewellers to diversify, in what represents a change to historical patterns.”
The BofA analysts wrote that even a 1% switch in gold to platinum jewelry could help double the white metal’s supply deficit to 1.6 million ounces.
Source – Markets Insider
Unusually large shipments of copper to the United States are unlikely to abate as long as the threat of tariffs hangs over the market and price premiums for the metal on U.S.-based COMEX make deals profitable for traders and producers, analysts said.
COMEX copper hit a record high at $11,633 a metric ton on March 26, creating a premium of more than $1,570 a ton against the benchmark contract on the London Metal Exchange.
“We expect 250,000-300,000 tons of extra copper will be shipped to the U.S. over March-May because of the spread and amid the uncertainties regarding the tariff,” said Sharon Ding, head of China basic materials at UBS Investment Research.
“It’s possible we’ll see more atypical cargos in the second half of May,” Kpler analyst Ben Ayre said. “While the COMEX price continues to run at a premium to the LME there’s a strong incentive to land refined copper in the United States.”
Source – Reuters
A bevy of tariff headlines this week along with geopolitical worries has left investors wary and weary, taking stocks lower in Asian hours, gold to a record peak and the yen to its highest in over two months as sentiment remains fragile.
The risk-off mood meant the yen – already underpinned by rising odds of the Bank of Japan hiking rates again – was the main mover among currencies, hitting its highest level since early December and was last at 150.48 per dollar.
Both Citi and Goldman raised their target price on gold this month, predicting it to breach the $3,000 mark. A large part of the reason behind the bullishness is sustained demand from central banks. Perhaps in these uncertain times, gold is all that shines.
Source – Reuters
“Silver’s been a laggard, and some would refer to it as the Cinderella metal, because it always misses the ball. Having said that, silver has finally woken up and broken above some key technical resistance,” independent analyst Ross Norman said. If current momentum continued, silver could challenge the $35 level, he added.
“Silver has a long history of higher volatility than gold, and that when gold makes a decisive move, silver’s amplitude is usually 2.0-2.5 times that of gold,” StoneX analyst Rhona O’Connell said in a recent note.
Source – Reuters
