Gold was little changed near an eight-month high as traders assessed heightened tensions over Ukraine ahead of an expected meeting next week between Russia and the US.
The US said Russia has massed as many as 190,000 personnel — including troops, National Guard units and Russian-backed separatists — in and around Ukraine in what it called the most significant military mobilization since World War II.
Russia has repeatedly denied it plans to attack. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov have agreed to talk.
Photo: Reuters
The standoff between the West and Russia has increased the appeal of haven assets such as gold. The precious metal posted a third straight weekly gain, its longest run this year, even as the US Federal Reserve is preparing to raise rates, which could damp demand for non-interest bearing gold.
“A rise in Russia risk premium” contributed to the increase in gold prices from the start of this month, TD Securities commodity strategists led by Bart Melek said in a note.
Citigroup Inc analysts, including Aakash Doshi, upgraded their near-term price forecast to US$1,950 an ounce from US$1,825, citing the geopolitical tensions.
Further out, the bank remains bearish, with a target of US$1,750 over six to 12 months as “higher real yields and stronger equities can weigh on bullion prices again.”
“The short-term bid for gold driven by Black Sea military tensions, a spike in risky asset volatility, and inflation hedge demand will need to grapple with an increasingly hawkish Fed and higher policy rates come March,” Doshi said.
Doshi called gold a “pain trade” and noted his bearishness on gold for both the second half of this year and next year, when he has forecast gold would fall to US$1,675 an ounce.
Spot gold on Friday fell 0.1 percent to US$1,896.29 an ounce in New York, after reaching US$1,900.06 during the day.
Bullion for April delivery slipped 0.1 percent to settle at US$1,899.80 on the Comex. The contract rose 3 percent this week.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index on Friday rose 0.2 percent.
Silver gained, while platinum and palladium fell.
GOLD STOCKS
Oil and gas stocks have been the top performers in the US and Canada to start the year, but gold miners are poised to steal that crown this month thanks to a combination of geopolitical risk in Europe and inflationary risk in North America.
In Toronto, where the most large-cap gold and mining stocks are traded, the S&P/TSX Composite Gold Index is up more than 15 percent this month, outperforming the Energy Index by 13 percentage points and the broader market by almost 15 percentage points each.
In the US, Newmont Corp and Royal Gold Inc have led the S&P 1500 Supercomposite Gold Index to a roughly 11 percent return this month, compared with a 3 percent gain for the S&P 1500 Supercomposite Energy Index.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS