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Gold prices rose on Wednesday as markets broadly reversed their moves from Tuesday’s post-holiday session in the U.S.
Still, it remained very much trapped in a range between $1,800 per ounce and $1,890 per ounce — a range that has held for the past six weeks.
Price action
-
Gold futures
GC00,
+0.49% GCQ22,
+0.49%
expiring in August gained $7.40, or 0.4%, to $1,846. -
Silver futures
SIN22,
-1.00%
expiring in July dropped 30 cents, or 1.4%, to $21.46 per ounce. -
Platinum futures
PLN22,
-1.06%
expiring in July were off $12.50, or 1.3%, to $21.50. -
Palladium futures
PAU22,
-0.60%
expiring in September gained $64, or 3.6%, to $1,853. -
Copper
HGN22,
-2.98%
futures expiring in July lost 14 cents, or 3.6%, to $3.91 per ton.
What’s driving markets
Gold started the year right around the $1,800 level, and peaked above $2,050 an ounce in March before surrendering most of those gains during the second quarter. Futures prices have managed to hold above $1,0800 an ounce, but the strength of the U.S. dollar has constrained the value of the yellow metal.
Silver has been seemingly caught in gold’s slipstream, according to a team of commodity analysts from Commerzbank, while demand in emerging markets, particularly the impact of China’s COVID lockdowns, has also weighed on precious metals prices.
Daniel Briesemann, a precious metals strategist at Commerzbank, said “the firmer US dollar is presumably the main factor weighing on gold today” and that any new insights on the Federal Reserve’s plans for battling inflation gleaned from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s Wednesday testimony before the Senate Banking Committee could also impact prices.
He also pointed out that the precious metal has “failed repeatedly in recent weeks to live up to its reputation as a safe haven”. Gold prices are up roughly 0.7% this year, but they’re still outperforming stocks and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin
BTCUSD,
by a wide margin.
Other markets
-
The U.S. dollar
DX00,
-0.29% DXU22,
-0.29%
was up 0.1% according to the ICE U.S. Dollar Index, which represents the greenback’s value against a basket of rich world currencies. -
Bitcoin prices
BTCUSD,
-0.97%
were down nearly 3% at $20,120. -
The yield on the 10-year Treasury
TMUBMUSD10Y,
3.133%
was off more than 11 basis points at 3.18%, roughly 10 basis points higher than the 2-year yield
TMUBMUSD02Y,
3.055%
which was off 4 basis points at 3.08%. -
U.S. stocks looked ready to fall at the open, as futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average
YMU22,
-0.60%
were off 90 points.
