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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Weakness in Gold Not Sustainable: China, Investors and Central Banks Buy on Dips

By BullionVault on December 4, 2012 8:44 AM

SPOT MARKET prices to buy gold rose back above $1705 an ounce during Tuesday morning’s London session, though it remained below where it started the week following falls overnight, while stock markets also edged higher along with the Euro after European leaders welcomed progress on Greece’s debt buyback program.


Silver meantime fell to around $33.30 an ounce, still above last week’s low, as other commodity prices also dipped.

Earlier on Tuesday spot gold fell to $1700 an ounce, its lowest level since the first week of November. Gold priced in Euros meantime fell to its lowest level since mid-August this morning.

“Clearly the situation has eased with respect to the Euro debt crisis, or market players are ignoring it,” says a note from Commerzbank.

“The dip in the price of gold was not accompanied by weaker ETF demand,” Commerzbank adds, noting that Bloomberg data show gold exchange traded funds saw their holdings rise to a fresh record yesterday.

“We therefore view the current price weakness is non-sustainable.”

generic gold black Weakness in Gold Not Sustainable: China, Investors and Central Banks Buy on Dips“The break [lower] probably will not last long,” agrees one trader in Sydney, speaking to newswire Reuters this morning.

“Funds are happy to buy on dips, and so will the central banks and the Chinese.”

Self-directed individual investors are also taking advantage of dips to add to their gold positions, according to the latest Gold Investor Index data published Tuesday.


The Gold Investor Index, which measures investor sentiment towards physical gold by tracking buying and selling activity on online precious metals exchange BullionVault, rose to a six-month high of 56.5 last month, up from 56.0 in October, with a reading above 50 indicating more net buyers than net sellers over the month.

On the currency markets meantime the Euro rallied to a seven-week high against the Dollar Tuesday morning, breaching $1.30.

Following their meeting on Monday Eurozone finance ministers said they confident Greece’s debt buyback program will be a success.

Last week’s Eurogroup statement said single currency finance ministers expected the prices Greece paid to buy back its bonds “to be no higher than those at the close on Friday 23 November 2012″.

Since the buyback announcement however Greek bond prices have risen, and Athens yesterday revealed the maximum price it will pay to be above that 23 November level.

Since the bond buyback announcement, the volume of Greek bonds traded has “increased by the day”, according to Citigroup head of European government bond trading Zoeb Sachee.
“Hedge funds must have bought lower than here.”

“The official sector continues to demonstrate its total misunderstanding of how markets operate,” adds Julian Adams, chief investment officer at Adelante Asset Management in London, whose firm holds Greek debt... More>>