Gold benefits as volatility spikes

UNITED STATES October 23 2014 5:41 PMTweet 
NEW YORK (Scrap Register): Gold continued to recover last week as global market volatility spiked. In US dollar terms, gold ended the week with a year-to-date (YTD) gain of 2.6% compared to the 2.1 % YTD increase in the S&P 500 index, despite a 6.4% increase in the US dollar index.

St. Louis Fed governor Bullard put forward a case to pause the tapering of the Fed's bond-buying program me and advocated an ‘open-ended' programme that could respond to a weakening of inflation or labor market conditions.

This helped to stabilize equity and commodity markets pressuring the USD, supporting gold and the precious metals (PMs). The most industrial orientated PM, palladium, was the week's laggard declining 4.0% which reduced the 2014 gain to 5.2%.

Fears of a slowdown in global economic growth and a potential reduction in sanction s against Russia, fuelled the downtrend.

ETF Securities believes that gold has bottomed at $1,200 an ounce. Which would suggest that beaten-up silver and platinum may have more upside potential.