Making the most of declining junior miners
Miners are underperforming gold despite getting support from the stock market.
After a puzzling 3% jump within just 10 minutes early Friday morning, the spot gold price simmered down to $1,315 by late afternoon.
Following Thursday’s movement, gold is sitting in a good place for the end of the week. The precious metal was hit hard on Tuesday – a three month low of $1,253 – but managed to regain those losses on expectations that the US government will extend its monetary stimulus program.
Spot gold rose by 3% in early trading hours but lost those gains throughout the day. High trading volumes in the morning puzzled analysts as a “wave of buy orders worth over $2.3 billion surged into the market,” a Reuters article shows.
These unexplained “trade surges” have become increasingly common over the past few weeks.
Friday’s eventual decline is partly due to data showing decreased holdings in gold-backed ETFs.
“It remains to be seen whether the investor community will now restart their buying of various ETF’s given that the Fed’s tapering intentions are now merely being postponed,” a metals analyst at brokerage INTL FCStone told Reuters.
Meanwhile, a Chinese credit rating agency downgraded US sovereign debt by one notch to A- – a move which helped drag down the dollar to an eight-month low versus the euro and a currency basket.
