Gold advanced to a seven-week high on Thursday with February futures, the most active contract on the Comex market, hitting a high of $1,207.20 an ounce, up nearly 1% from Wednesday’s close and the highest on an intra-day basis since November 23.
The metal pared those gains in afternoon trading in another day of huge volumes in New York, dipping below the psychologically important $1,200 an ounce level, but year to date the metal is up more than 4%.
It’s only two weeks in, but gold seems to be following a familiar playbook this year. The price of gold raced higher out of the gate in 2016 only to give up most of those gains after peaking in July. A similar pattern was followed in 2015 although weakness returned to the market earlier than last year.
2016 was the first year in four that gold enjoyed an annual gain, but few dare to call it the return of a bull market. This chart from Saxo Bank from its quarterly outlook shows all too clear that bullion bears are still in charge with the price on several occasions failing to break the downtrend in place since 2011’s record high.
4 Comments
Eccles
Drawing a trend line from the absolute highs in 2011, 2013 and 2016 and then saying that bears are in control is not correct. They have just defined the upper most point of the channel post-2011 and have ignored price action prior to 2011.
JH
its “pared”, not “paired” and next stop 1250.
“….only to give up most of those gains after peaking in July.”
Happy to hope that gold rises until July. That day, that worry. Six months is oceans of time. Got to 1370 last July 2016. I’d be happy with that.
Allan Ritchie
yes id say gold will end 2017 lower,its basically been hyped up for so long its doomed to fall
Jason Knowles
As it should be. I never understood why good topped out in 2011, I had watched the presidential cycles and I knew Bush would lead to Obama, but I never thought it would top out so soon in his presendency, BUT luckily I sold everything 3 days before they killed Bin Laden, Not that it was total luck, I knew in the past that when the gold stocks stop following the gold price, it is time to sell. The reality is it didn’t occur to me that it would make total sense that the gold price would skyrocket the most in Obamas first two years, that is when he had the momentum and the power to get away with the most, and afterword, would be hampered by a reaction against him, which to some degree he was, and some were against him for good reasons. Now, who the heck knows what is going to happen, but it would appear unlikely that the political situation is ripe for the far left to get what they want until after Trump’s presidency, if he disapoints, which is likely, and we get a bernie sanders. He might get help because it appears that the rise in interest rates, which is long overdue, is happening now, and probably being done for the wrong reason, that is, to purposely cause a recession to put stress of the trump presedency, and reignite the gold price, but I don’t see anything but a slow increase until the democrats gain some momentum, which they can’t help but get because they are starting from the bottom now.