Germany Chancellor plans lithium deal with Serbia after Rio ruling
Olaf Scholz plans to visit Serbia this week to secure supplies of lithium that are critical for the nation’s energy transition and auto industry.
December gold added $35 or 2.2% to trade at $1,657.10 an ounce in noon dealings in New York on Monday regaining a sliver of the ground lost during September, the worst month for the precious metal since the start of the 2008 recession.
September was a particularly volatile period for gold. Early on the metal hit an intraday record of $1,923.10 only to shed 17% over the course of the month. Today’s dealings are also in sharp contrast to a week ago: in Asian trade on Monday September 26 bullion plunged $130 within a few hours, a move which many gold bugs are now saying had nothing to do with fundamentals but was intended to send a message.
MarketWatch reports the 26 September break has provoked a great deal of suspicion. Veteran Ross Norman, now of the UK gold-dealing site Sharps Pixley, remarked of the sellers: “Placing such a huge order into the market when the least number of market participants were active tells you that they were out for dramatic effect. Anyone looking to offload significant amounts of metal at the best possible price would have done so when both London and New York were both [open]. Clearly finessing gold into the market was not their motive — they wanted a statement.”
Comments
Shawk Nixon
Only a professional or large institution would own that many contracts. And any large institution would not sell in a huge block like that in the Asian session. So certainly someone did that to run stops. Whether its a government, central bank or just a large investment bank, this is the main reason why precious metals needs position limits.