Gold surges 1% in the week as gain halves after Powell’s comment on inflation



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Gold surges 1% in the week as gain halves after Powell’s comment on inflation
Gold surges 1% in the week as gain halves after Powell’s comment on inflation (Provided by Financial World)

On Friday, the precious safe-haven gold futures’ prices had wrapped up the day off their session highs, as US Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comment on inflation had eased market participants’ optimism over the yellow metal, however, still both spot gold and US gold futures’ prices had winded up the session with modest gains.

Aside from that, a weaker US Dollar coupled with a 0.03 per cent decline in 10-year US Treasury bond notes to 1.63 per cent, had helped gold futures’ prices shelve decent gains. However, earlier in the day, US Fed Chair Jerome Powell was quoted saying that the US Central Bank would soon begin a tapering of fiscal support for the economy, however, it would be too early to call in a rate-hike given the scale of unemployment in US labour market.

Apart from that, Fed’s Powell also had added that an ongoing blistering rise in inflation with US Fed’s benchmark inflation indicator, Core PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditure) price index, hovering just a hair shy of 4.0 per cent, nearly double of US Fed’s target range between 2.0 per cent and 3.0 per cent, would more likely to be eased by early-2021, eventually pouring cold water on commodity markets as gold is often contemplated as a hedge against higher inflation.

Gold post weekly gains as US Dollar softens

Citing statistics, in the day’s commodity market wind-up, spot gold prices edged 0.6 per cent higher to $1,793.82 an ounce after rising as much as 1.7 per cent earlier in the session, while US gold futures’ prices gained 0.8 per cent to $1,795.80 an ounce.

Over the week, spot gold prices jumped 1.4 per cent, while US gold futures settled 1 per cent higher. Meanwhile, addressing to Fed’s Powell’s remark, a director of metals trading at High Ridge Futures, David Meger said, “Clearly, the pullback was in regards to comments from the Fed Chairman with regards to how he expects inflation to potentially remain elevated well into next year.

However, that is a double-edged sword. The inflationary pressures remaining in the market will be an underlying supportive factor for gold and silver in the weeks and months ahead”.