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Gold Hits 18-Month High vs 'Safe Haven' Franc But Silver Jumps Faster as Trump Slams TPP

April 18, 2018
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GOLD rose in London trade on Wednesday, recovering an overnight dip to reach $1352 per ounce for US investors and rising fastest against the ‘safe haven’ Swiss Franc and Japanese Yen currencies but outpaced by a sharp jump in the price of silver.
 
Rising almost 2% in London trade, silver prices touched 11-week highs against the Dollar at $17.11 per ounce.
 
That pushed the Gold/Silver Ratio of the two metals’ relative prices back below 80 for the first time since mid-March.
 
European stock markets failed to follow Asian equities higher, but commodity prices rose, with Brent crude oil nearing last week’s 3-year highs above $72.50 per barrel.
 
“While Japan and South Korea would like us to go back into [the Trans Pacific Partnership], I don’t like the deal for the United States,” tweeted US President Donald Trump ahead of a 2-day meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
 
“Bilateral deals are far more efficient, profitable and better for OUR workers. Look how bad WTO is to US.”
 
“The multilateral rules-based trade system that evolved after world war two nurtured unprecedented growth in the world economy,” said International Monetary Fund economic counsellor Maurice Obstfeld yesterday, presenting the IMF’s latest forecast updates.
 
“It is in danger of being torn apart [because] voters’ disillusionment [with globalization] raises the threat of political developments that could destabilize a range of economic policies…reaching beyond trade.”
 
Gold prices rose fastest on Wednesday against the Swiss Franc, touching the highest level since the UK’s Brexit referendum shock of mid-2016 at CHF 1307 per ounce.
 
Having rejected a return to gold-backed currency in 2014, Swiss citizens will in June vote in a referendum on adopting ‘sovereign money’. 
 
Proponents of this ‘vollgeld’ initiative claim it will reduce financial volatility, risk and profiteering by making the central bank the sole source of new money creation.
 
Chart of gold priced in Swiss Francs. Source: BullionVault
 
Major government bond prices meantime slipped Wednesday, edging longer-term interest rates higher.
 
Ten-year US Treasury yields rose back to April’s highs so far at 2.83%.
 
New data today said annual consumer-price inflation in the UK fell to a 12-month low in March. But at 2.5% it remained above the Bank of England’s government-required target for the 14th month in a row.
 
UK inflation has now been higher than the BoE’s 2.0% target for almost two-thirds of the last 10 years.
 
So-called ‘core’ inflation in the 19-nation Eurozone – stripping out volatile food and fuel costs – meantime stuck at 1.0% yet again.
 
Over in Washington, Donald Trump welcomed news reports of CIA director Mike Pompeo’s secret Easter weekend visit to North Korea.
 
A briefing from the White House on Trump’s strategy for Syria in contrast left US lawmakers “unnerved” reports CNN, quoting one Republican senator as saying the administration is “going down a dangerous path” after last weekend’s airstrikes against Assad regime facilities.

Gold Prices Fall on US, UK and China Data as Trump Adds FX to 'Trade War'

April 17, 2018
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GOLD PRICES fell below $1340 per ounce lunchtime Tuesday in London, retreating to unchanged from this time last week against most major currencies after much-stronger than expected US home-building stats.
 
March saw the number of new building permits rise 2.5% said the Census Bureau, with a revision to February’s data cutting the size of that month’s drop.
 
China earlier reported stronger-than-expected GDP data, with the world’s second-largest economy expanding by 6.8% annually in the first 3 months of this year.
 
The Shanghai Composite stock index closed 1.4% lower however, even as the People’s Bank cut its required reserves ratio, lowering the amount of cash which commercial lenders need to hold back from new loans in a bid to boost borrowing.
 
European stock markets then rose as major government bond yields eased back, trimming longer-term interest rates.
 
China’s Yuan meantime edged higher on the FX market after US President Trump accused Beijing of seeking to win a bigger share of exports by unfairly weakening its currency.
 

Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2018

 
With Shanghai gold prices little changed on Tuesday, the premium for metal landed in China rather than London rallied to $8 per ounce, back in line with the average incentive for new imports to the world’s No.1 gold consumer nation.
 
China’s private gold consumer demand shrank 5.4% in January-March from the first quarter of last year, state body the China Gold Association said today, with sales of investment gold bars sinking 27.6%.
 
The UK gold price in British Pounds per ounce meantime fell back near March’s 3-month low after new jobs data beat analyst forecasts, with unemployment falling to a new four-decade low of 4.2%.
 
With the Pound jumping on the FX market, gold prices for UK investors fell below £934 per ounce, down 3.2% for 2018 so far.
 
The gold price in US Dollars, in contrast, traded 3.0% higher from New Year.
 
Chart of gold priced in US Dollars (blue, left) and in UK Pounds. Source: St.Louis Fed via LBMA
 
“Pound trades near post-Brexit highs as UK wages rise,” says the Financial Times of the currency move.
 
But while the Pound has now regained 19.7% versus the Dollar since early 2017’s low, it has rallied only 6.4% versus the Euro.
 
“The year-long squeeze on wages is nearing an end,” announces the BBC in its report on the UK data, using the ONS’s figure of 2.8% for February’s annual pay growth – in fact, an average of 3 months’ figures.
 
February alone in contrast saw a sharp deceleration in UK pay growth, dropping from 2.8% in January to 2.3%, the slowest rate since July and 0.4 percentage points below the Consumer Price Index’s increase.
 
Based on the monthly and not quarterly data, total UK wages have now failed to beat CPI inflation on 9 of the last 12 months of data.
 
But “First pay rise in a year ‘seals the deal’ for further rate rise,” says the London Evening Standard, quoting Dutch bank ING’s economist James Smith.
 
“With [this] final piece now in place,” agrees fund giant Fidelity’s investment director Tom Stevenson, “the Bank of England has the catalyst to follow through on its plans to raise interest rates at the next MPC meeting in May.”
 
Looking at US interest rate rises, “Three or four seems like a reasonable expectation this year,” said current New York Fed president William Dudley – due to stand aside this spring – to CNBC overnight.
 
“As long as inflation is relatively low, the Fed is going to be gradual.”
 
The US-China trade war meantime rolled on, with Beijing today imposing a ‘deposit’ charge of 178.6% on the value of shipments of US sorghum, starting Wednesday.

Gold Price Tries $1350 for 13th Time in 5 Years as 'Actual War' Pushes Trade War Aside

April 17, 2018
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GOLD PRICES spiked against a falling Dollar in late London trade on Monday, recovering an earlier 0.5% dip as Moscow denied US claims that Russian forces have “interfered” with the site of last week’s deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria, while new data said US consumers spent more than analysts expected in stores and malls last month.
 
US retail sales grew 0.6% in March from February, the Census Bureau said, expanding at a 4.7% annual rate excluding foodstuffs – well above the last 20 years’ average of 3.8%.
 
UK prime minister Theresa May meantimee faced questions from lawmakers after failing to consult Parliament before the weekend’s joint airstrikes with US and French forces against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
 
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov meantime repeated his claim today that the chemical weapons attack on opposition Syrian civilians was a “staged thing…[and] Russia has not tampered with the site” since then, as alleged today by a US envoy to the United Nations’ chemical weapons team.
 
Gold rose against all major currencies as New York opened for trading, but it only rose above Friday’s closing level in US Dollar terms, moving above $1350 per ounce for the 13th time in the last 5 years.
 
Chart of USD gold price, last 5 years. Source: BullionVault
 
“We have certainly not heard the last about [US-China] trade wars,” says the latest weekly analysis from strategist Jonathan Butler at Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi, “but for now the markets could remain focused on the threats of actual wars.
 
“Such tensions can quickly be priced out if the situation eases…[but] just as crude oil prices have taken strength from the current geopolitical situation, rising to a 3-year high on fears of Middle East supply interruption, so too we expect precious metals to remain well supported as traditional safe havens.”
 
Gold prices had slipped at the start of the week’s trading in China overnight, finally ending the day flat in Yuan terms while the Chinese currency itself retreated from last week’s rise near January’s 2.5-year highs against the US Dollar.
 
Together that halved the premium for gold delivered in Shanghai rather than the world’s central hub of London, down from a near-average level of $8 to little over $4 per ounce.
 
Allowing for India’s 10% import duty on gold, prices in its airfreight hub of Ahmedabad meantime ended last week at a premium of 50 cents per ounce over London, reversing an earlier steep discount as wholesale demand returned ahead of this Wednesday’s Akshaya Tritiya festival.
 
“Footfalls are still significantly lower than usual” thanks to high Indian Rupee prices, Reuters quotes a jeweler in the western Indian city of Pune.
 
“[That] is forcing industry players to give discounts on jewelry- making charges.”
 
“Overall there is a positive sentiment in the market,” claims Nitin Khandelwal, chair of the All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council (GJC), “so we are hoping for 15-20% growth in sales this Akshaya Tritiya compared to last year.”

Gold Price Erases Trump's Syria-Threat Spike as Russia Aims to 'Punch Stomach' of US-UK Alliance

April 13, 2018
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GOLD PRICES failed to hold an overnight rally in London on Friday, dropping back to show no change for the week in Dollar and Euro terms as Moscow hit back at US sanctions and  accused a “Russophobic campaign” of staging last weekend’s chemical attack on civilians in Syria.
 
Trading back at $1337 per ounce, the gold price in Dollars held over 2% below Wednesday’s spike to 20-month highs, made as US President Donald Trump threatened to strike against Syrian government forces despite Russian military support for the regime.
 
Refusing to give the UK Parliament a vote on airstrikes, prime minister Theresa May is now “waiting for instructions from Donald Trump” alleged opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn today, urging against “escalating an already devastating conflict” in Syria by targeting Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad for the attack in Douma.
 
The town fell overnight to Assad’s forces, says a report on Al-Jazeera, giving the regime full control of the former rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta.
 
The US President himself meantime hit back at ex-FBI director James Comey’s new book – including fresh claims over the “pee tape” allegedly used by the Kremlin to blackmail Trump – calling Comey an “untruthful slime ball”.
 
The Moscow stock market held onto this week’s rally, halving last week’s 10% plunge following US sanctions over Russia’s alleged role in the poisoning of an ex-spy in the British city of Salisbury.
 
The Russian Ruble also held its 5.5% rally from Wednesday’s spike to 17-month lows versus the Dollar.
 
World stock markets meantime extended their gains, taking the Euro Stoxx 50 index 1.6% higher from last Friday’s finish.
 
The Euro currency held 2 cents shy of February’s 3-year high against the Dollar, holding the gold price for investors in No.4 consumer nation Germany at €1085 per ounce.
 
Priced in the British Pound in contrast, gold showed a 0.9% loss for the week down at £937 per ounce, a 3-week low.
 
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the gold price in Dollars has now risen 11.8% and gained 16.8% against the Ruble – currency of the world’s No.2 gold mining nation.
 
Adjusted for the Dollar’s trade-weighted value on the currency markets, in contrast, the non-US gold price has risen only 2.6%.
 
Trading at the equivalent of just $1227 per ounce, the non-Dollar gold price today held more than $100 lower than the US price.
 
Chart of gold priced in Dollars and adjusted for US Dollar Broad Index, rebased to Trump's inauguration day. Source: St.Louis Fed
 
Moscow has “irrefutable information that [the Douma chemical weapons attack] was another fabrication,” claimed Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov today.
 
A draft bill going to the Duma next week will allow Russian companies to infringe US trademarks in what one senior politician called “a punch to the stomach [of] the domination of the Anglo-Saxon and Western world…ensured precisely by the right of intellectual property.”
 
Other proposals in what State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called “tit for tat” retaliation “respond[ng] to the boorish behavior by the US” include banning the sale of titanium to aircraft manufacturer Boeing.
 
With estimates earlier this week saying that the 50 Russian tycoons named by US sanctions last Friday had already lost $12 billion on a plunge in the value of their assets, the top 3 “may have lost a combined $7.5bn” over the last week according to Reuters’ data today.

Gold Gains Most vs. 'Safe Haven' Currencies, GLD Sees No Inflow as 'Hawkish' Fed 'Hammers' Price

April 12, 2018
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GOLD PRICES slipped on Thursday in London, retreating further from yesterday’s 2.5-month high against the Dollar after the US Federal Reserve forecast stronger interest-rate rises ahead and US President Donald Trump dialled down his threat to hit Russia’s ally Syria with airstrikes.
 
“Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!” Trump tweeted after saying Wednesday that Russia should “get ready” to see US missiles hit the forces of Bashar al-Assad, accused of attacking civilians with chemical weapons last weekend.
 
European stock markets rallied after Wall Street and Asia had fallen once more, while bond yields held little changed – and the Dollar fell back towards its lowest Chinese Yuan value of 2018 to date – despite notes from the Fed’s latest policy meeting saying that strong growth and rising inflation will lead to a faster pace of US interest-rate rises.
 
Looking at the gold price spike from Wednesday, “A flight to safety has been fuelled by US sanctions on Russia as well as deepening trade tension,” reckons Suki Cooper, head of precious metals research at London bullion market-making bank Standard Chartered.
 
“Gold is benefiting from the risk-off sentiment,” agrees analyst Simona Gambarini at consultancy Capital Economics.
 
“People are trying to hedge against worst-case scenarios.”
 
But gold’s sharpest gains so far this week have in fact come against the ‘safe haven’ currencies of Japan and Switzerland, with the metal rising 1.2% against the Yen and 1.4% against the Swiss Franc.
 
As for demand, last night’s finish in New York saw zero change for this week so far in the size of the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEArca:GLD) – the world’s largest gold-backed exchange traded fund – with its shares in issue needing 860 tonnes of backing.
 
Chart of SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEArca:GLD) tonnes vs gold price. Source: BullionVault via ExchangeTradedGold
 
Setting a new record on Monday for shares outstanding, Germany’s largest gold ETF – the Xetra-Gold trust fund product – ended Wednesday unchanged in size.
 
Data from Bloomberg show the Xetra-Gold trust fund product swelling by almost one-half in 2016, and expanding by a further 14% over the following 15 months.
 
Wednesday’s half-per-cent rise in Dollar silver prices also left the largest silver-backed ETF unchanged in size, with the shares outstanding in the iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca:SLV) still needing 9,959 tonnes of bullion to back their value.
 
“All participants agreed that the outlook for the economy had strengthened” and “all participants expected inflation on a 12-month basis to move up in coming months”, the US Fed meeting minutes showed Wednesday.
 
“With regard to the medium-term outlook…all participants saw some further firming of the stance of monetary policy as likely to be warranted.”
 
“Once the FOMC minutes were released [gold] was hammered,” says a trading note from Swiss refiners and finance group MKS Pamp.
 
Touching $1365 on Wednesday for only the second time since the UK’s shock Brexit referendum result of mid-2016, the gold price in Dollars traded over $20 lower per ounce by mid-morning in London on Thursday, cutting its gain for the week so far to 0.9%.
 
“Silver also propelled higher [on Weds] up to a peak of $16.8875,” says MKS, “but closed lower…following the Fed’s hawkish press release.”
 
Silver held firmer than gold prices Thursday morning, trading at $16.61 per ounce for a 1.4% Dollar-price gain from last Friday’s finish after touching an 8-week high before the Fed minutes yesterday.
 
Platinum prices meantime fell back to $925 after touching a 1-week high yesterday.
 
Palladium in contrast held almost 6.5% higher from last weekend as new US sanctions against Russian banks, companies and wealthy individuals over the Kremlin’s alleged toxic nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain threatens to block supplies from the metal’s No.1 miner nation.

Gold Price Breaks $1345 for 6th Time in 2018 as Russia-US Tensions Worsen

April 11, 2018
Latest News
GOLD PRICES rose in Asian and London trade Wednesday morning, rising above $1345 per ounce for the 6th time in 2018 so far amid worsening US-Russia tensions over Syria.
 
Gaining 1.0% from the end of last week in US Dollar and Japanese Yen terms, the gold price rose less steeply for investors in other currencies.
 
“I would once again beseech you to refrain from the plans that you’re currently developing,” said Russia’s envoy to the United Nations last night after US President Trump and French president 
Emmanuel Macron both spoke of using “force” against the regime of Bashar al-Assad for allegedly attacking civilians with chemical weapons at the weekend.
 
The Ruble has sunk this week, falling to its lowest Dollar value since late 2016 as the US imposes new sanctions against politically-connected oligarchs and businesses, forcing Moscow to cancel a new issue of government debt.
 
“An escalating trade war, political conflict with Russia and a continuing market slump are issues currently simmering,” says a note from German-headquartered refiners Heraeus, “but should any one of them boil over they could create a swing into safe havens and precious metals.”
 
Chart of gold price in US Dollars, last 5 years. Source: BullionVault
 
Despite Wall Street’s overnight surge following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s strong performance before a Senate committee over his company’s data protection failings, Asian stock markets slipped Wednesday and the Stoxx Europe 600 index fell for the fourth of 7 sessions so far in April.
 
Rising to €1087 per ounce, the gold price in Euros moved opposite to the direction of European equities for the 5th trading day of April to date.
 
“We’ve seen volatility risk in the stock market, and geopolitical risk concerning the situation in Russia and the Middle East,” Bloomberg quotes Michael Blumenroth, analyst at German financial services group Deutsche Bank.
 
“People have become nervous in Germany so they were buying gold.”
 
The rise in gold prices means No.2 consumer nation India in contrast is seeing weak gold demand, dealers report, despite the approaching festival of Akshaya Tritiya and the spring wedding season.
 
Discounts to global quotes yesterday rose to $2.50 per ounce in India’s import hub of Ahmedabad, according to data from futures exchange NCDEX.
 
“[One] reason for the dismal demand,” says the Business Standard, “is that rural unemployment is higher than a year ago…[up from] 3.6% to 6.27% now.”
 
Urban unemployment is also higher in India, rising from 4.4% to 6.7% and also crimping the household sector’s spending power.
 
Looking ahead, “We expect trade tensions to ease, the US Dollar to recover, the Fed to continue to hike rates and investor sentiment to improve,” says a bearish note on bullion from Dutch bank ABN Amro.
 
“Therefore it is likely that gold prices will come under pressure.”

Gold and Silver Prices Fall Amid Ongoing US-China Trade Dispute, Bearish Betting on Silver Reach Record Highs

April 10, 2018
Latest News

GOLD AND SILVER PRICES slipped on Monday morning in London amid the ongoing uncertainty over the US/Chinese trade war and the air strikes in Syria, writes Steffen Grosshauser at BullionVault.

Gold fell $6 from Friday’s close at $1333 per ounce after a volatile week while markets were waiting for the next move in the trade dispute between the world’s biggest economies the Unites States and China.

Asian and European shares climbed and the US Dollar strengthened after its decline last week following much weaker than expected US job data. Market tensions eased on Sunday when US President Donald tweeted that China would “take down its trade barrier”, just a few days before President Xi Jinping’s keynote speech at the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) in Hainan.

Bloomberg reports that China may be considering a gradual Yuan depreciation as a tool in the trade dispute

Although tariffs have been announced on both sites, none of them have been implemented as yet.

The heated discussion over a potential trade war also drove Chinese investors into buying gold ETFs as a safe haven, according to the mining-backed marketing group the World Gold Council (WGC).

“Inflows in the US and China reflect broader market uncertainty related in part to geopolitical risks such as global trade tensions in March,” WGC director of investment research Juan Carlos Artigas said.

The holdings of the world’s biggest gold ETF, the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEArca:GLD), grew by 7.7 tonnes to the highest since September 2017.

Comex speculators, in contrast, reduced their net positions in gold futures and options by 20% last week, according to the latest Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data. These contracts, mainly traded by hedge funds and other large speculators, declined for six of the last ten weeks.

At the same time, these non-commercial speculators extended their net short position in Comex silver by 17% to 6,159 tonnes – the biggest net short position since the reporting started in 2006. The silver positions have fallen for seven out of ten weeks.

'Managed Money' Net in Comex Silver Futures & Options

Comex platinum investors almost turned  bearish with the net long position down to 1 tonne after reductions for the sixth successive week.

Silver prices rose 0.5% from last week’s close at $16.38 per ounce just to fall back to $16.35. Palladium, however, rallied $23 to $931 on Monday, extending its lead over its sister metal platinum which slightly advanced but last week plunged to its lowest level this year, pushing the gold/platinum ratio to an all-time high before the downward price movement  came to a halt on Friday.

“The chatter over the weekend appeared to suggest some optimism that some form of [US-Chinese] deal would likely be the probable outcome, though how long that could take to pan out remains a significant unknown, and as such further volatility seems likely,” according to Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at the Commodity Markets Council (CMC).

Gold Spikes on Weak US Jobs Data, Platinum Overtakes Palladium as US-China Trade War 'Gets Dangerous'

April 6, 2018
Latest News
GOLD PRICES jumped Friday lunchtime in London, briefly showing a weekly gain versus all major currencies bar the Canadian Dollar after US jobs data for March came in badly below analyst forecasts and world stock markets struggled to extend the week’s earlier rally as trade tensions between the US and China worsened yet further.
 
Gold then gave back its $5 spike however, trading flat from last Friday’s finish at $1324 per ounce.
 
Non-farm US payrolls expanded by only 103,000 last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said, barely half the consensus forecast but with February’s strong number revised higher.
 
Silver also jumped as gold touched $1330, turning a half-per-cent weekly loss into a 0.5% gain at a high of $16.46 per ounce.
 
Platinum failed to follow however, holding 2.1% down from last Friday’s finish after earlier touching a fresh 2018 low at $907.50 per ounce.
 
Sister-metal palladium – which finds 75% of its annual end-use in catalysts to reduce gasoline-engine emissions – fell harder yet again Friday morning, suffering what one trader called a “rout” to drop back below platinum’s Dollar price for the first time since October after overtaking it for the first time since 2001.
Chart of month-average platinum vs. palladium prices in US Dollars per ounce. Source: Johnson Matthey
 
Having surged to all-time record highs in late 2017, palladium is now down 14% year-to-date, a move blamed by the Wall Street Journal on the worsening US-China trade tariffs.
 
“Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange are [also] for the most part weaker Friday,” says specialist magazine Metal Bulletin‘s Fastmarkets site, also blaming “more nervousness in metals markets [on] more Trump rhetoric.”
 
Shanghai steel rebar prices have now sunk 25% from end-2017’s record high in Yuan terms, while copper today traded over 8% below end-2017’s four-year high in US Dollars.
 
Hitting 6-year highs last October, aluminum prices have since dropped more than 12%.
 
“Despite the aluminum tariffs, aluminum prices are DOWN 4%,” tweeted Trump overnight.
 
“People are surprised, I’m not! Lots of money coming into US coffers and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!”
 
After Beijing said Wednesday that it may meet Trump’s tariffs on $50bn of Chinese imports with a 25% charge on more than 100 US products, the White House on Thursday threatened a further $100bn of Chinese imports to the US with higher tariffs.
 
“We need to have international cooperation,” China’s state-run Xinhua news agency quotes United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres.
 
“Free trade is a very important contributor to global prosperity.”
 
“This is now getting more serious, and dangerous,” says Swiss bank UBS economic advisor and author George Magnus.
 
Now at $150bn, US tariffs are “targeting about 30%” of Chinese exports to the US, Magnus says, but “China can’t respond in kind” because its total imports from the US are only $130bn.
 
“So where do [Beijing policymakers] go next? US firms could be leaned on, face additional and aggravating regulation, or be sanctioned somehow…but this [would be] another ‘casus belli’ to the [White House]…[while] other countries in supply chains will be drawn in whether or not they choose.
 
“Can’t see any happy ending here or how [Chinese Yuan] isn’t going to take a plunge…Strongman Xi Jinping may play victim, but he’s already making strategic errors that will not benefit China which needs a trade war like a hole in the head.”
 
Shanghai’s gold market remained closed Friday for the Qing Ming Jie tomb-sweeping holiday, leaving Asian volumes “thin” as “resting orders [to sell] capped the market” according to Swiss refining and finance group MKS Pamp’s trading desk
 
Looking at the price of platinum – which finds two-fifths of annual end-use in catalysts to cut emissions from diesel-engine vehicles, now suffering a prolonged drop in European consumer sales – the metal in January “found stiff resistance at the upper band of [its] 1-year range,” says French bank Societe Generale’s latest technical analysis, “and has been undergoing a retracement.
 
“It is now closing in on the decadal [up]trend situated at $900/890, which remains a decisive support area.”

Gold Prices Drop as Greece-Turkey Stand-Off Worsens, US-China 'Trade War' Fears Ease

April 5, 2018
Latest News
GOLD PRICES fell on Thursday as global stock markets rose sharply after US President Trump’s new economic advisor denied that the world’s No.1 economy has started a “trade war” with the No.2, China, but tensions over a military war between Nato members Turkey and Greece worsened.
 
“There’s no trade war here,” former CNBC anchor Larry Kudlow told Fox overnight, calling Trump’s list of Chinese goods facing tariffs – already met by a Chinese list of US imports – “just the first proposals.
 
“I doubt there will be any concrete action for several months.”
 
Gold priced in Dollars fell back to unchanged for the week so far at $1326 per ounce, and major government bond prices also retreated as equities rose, pushing 10-year US Treasury yields to 1-week highs above 2.81%.
 
New data today showed the United States recording its heaviest deficit in net exports of goods since mid-2008 last month.
 
 
China’s stock market slipped again, but Tokyo added over 1.5% before European equities gained more than 2% on average, erasing the last month’s previous drop to 1-year lows on the Eurostoxx 50.
 
Turkey’s Borsa Istanbul 100 also rose, adding 0.4% to trade some 6% below January’s fresh all-time high as its Lira currency sank to new all-time lows on the FX maket amid worsening military tensions with Greece.
 
Wednesday saw Turkish warplanes violate Greek airspace 31 times over the Aegean Sea, Athens said last night – the actions of an “enemy that continues to provoke us” according to Greek defense minister Panos Kammenos, ordering the deployment of 7,000 additional troops to disputed islands and the border in Thrace.
 
“If they have the guts let them dare to challenge one inch of our territory…the Greeks, united, will crush them,” Kammenos told reservists on the eastern island of Ikaria yesterday.
 
Turkey’s consulate in Athens last night had its windows smashed, reportedly by 15-20 members of a self-declared anarchist group.
 
“We think it likely that portfolio diversification and rising geopolitical uncertainty were the chief drivers” for the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey’s additional gold buying in 2017, says consultancy Metals Focus in its new Gold Focus 2018, launched Wednesday.
 
Turkey also came in the top 5 countries for each of gold jewelry production, net investment demand, and scrap gold recycling in 2017 on Metals Focus’ analysis.
 
Second only in 2017 to Russia’s central-bank gold buying, “The majority of [Turkey’s added] gold reserves was believed to have been bought in the international market,” Metals Focus says, contrasting this with Moscow’s purchases from Russian mining’s “sizeable structural surplus” over domestic private-sector demand.
 
Following a successful push starting in 2012 for private savers in Turkey to hold gold with commercial banks – which could then be recorded with the central bank as part of the lenders’ financial reserves – Ankara last April announced a less successful plan to attract privately-owned gold into the formal financial system.
 
Chart of CBRT's total gold reserves vs. commercial-bank portion. Source: Metals Focus
 
US prosecutors yesterday asked a court in Manhattan to sentence Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla – convicted in January for breaking Western sanctions against Iran in a trial which Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a “political coup attempt” against his government by the FBI and CIA – to 20 years in prison, with an absolute minimum of 15.
 
Involving illegal gold and cash transfers, Atilla’s scheme – which some witnesses linked to senior Turkish politicians, including Erdogan himself – enabled Tehran to sell oil for foreign currency despite the Obama White House’s 2012 sanctions over its nuclear weapons program.
 
Back in the bullion market, silver fell Thursday in lockstep with gold prices on Thursday, touching the cheapest Dollar price in more than 2 weeks at $16.20 per ounce and holding the Gold/Silver Ratio of the two metals’ relative prices just shy of 2-year highs at 81.5.
 
Platinum prices fell harder yet again, touching the lowest level in Euro terms since February 2009 at €740 per ounce – a price first reached on the way up in December 2003.
 
“Gold has a much higher probability of moving north as opposed to south,” Bloomberg today quotes Stephen Letwin, CEO of top 25 mining producer Iamgold (TSE:IMG).
 
“I’ve been around a long time. When you’re in an industry that’s not replacing what it produces, eventually, the price has to move up.”

Gold Jumps vs Euro, Hits New Record Over Platinum as Trump-China Trade War Worsens

April 4, 2018
Latest News
GOLD PRICES leapt against non-US currencies on Wednesday, erasing last week’s drop for Dollar investors and setting a new all-time high above platinum as the US-China trade war intensified, whacking world stock markets once more.
 
As Wall Street futures pointed sharply lower, led by US automakers after China announced retaliatory tariffs following the Trump White House’s latest move on trade, the gold price in Dollars erased the final $2 of last week’s $20 loss, touched $1347 per ounce.
 
Gold rose faster still for non-US investors however as the Dollar rallied on the FX market, jumping to €1097 per ounce for Euro investors – its highest level since late-January – with a 2.0% rise for the week so far.
 
The UK gold price in Pounds per ounce meantime added 1.5% from Easter weekend to trade at £960, its highest level in a month.
 
Silver prices fell back against the Dollar however, cutting this weel’s rally to 0.7% at $16.48 per ounce.
 
That took the Gold/Silver Ratio up to 81.6 by lunchtime in London, the highest reading for gold’s value relative to silver since March 2016 and less than 3% below the highest reading of the last two decades. 
 
That was set at 83.8 amid the financial chaos immediately after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in autumn 2008.
 
Gold’s gain on Wednesday also pushed its premium over the price of platinum to a new modern record at $422 per ounce.
 
Chart of platinum vs gold price in US Dollars, daily since 1990. Source: BullionVault
 
Today finding 40% of its end-use in catalysts to reduce harmful emissions from diesel engines, platinum traded above gold throughout the 20th Century, averaging a premium of $205 per ounce in the 25 years to 2015.
 
Since then however, platinum prices have fallen to average a discount of $235 below gold.
 
Over in Beijing on Wednesday, the government of China said it’s planning to hike import tariffs on 106 goods from the US, retaliating over President Donald Trump’s new plans for a 25% tariff on more than 1,000 Chinese goods unveiled overnight.
 

We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 4, 2018

 
After the US stock market ended Tuesday with only its fifth gain of the last 15 sessions, Asian stock markets held flat overall, with Japan’s Topix closing 2.5% above last week’s 6-month low.
 
European equities then fell however, knocking 1.0% off the Stoxx 600 index to fall back near last Wednesday’s 14-month low.
 
New data today said unemployment in the 19-nation Eurozone fell last month to a new 9-year low, but ‘core’ inflation in consumer prices, excluding fuel and food, slowed to just 1.0% per annum.
 
March’s job creation in the United States meantime beat analyst forecasts on Wednesday’s private-sector ADP Payrolls’ estimate.
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