Gold has steadied in its decline but continues to hover around its four-month low, and little change is expected before the ECB meeting on Thursday and the US jobs data release on Friday. The non-farm payroll data release could give gold a nasty shock once more as it is expected to show that 215,000 jobs were added in May. This is above this year’s average. On the flipside of this, it is also likely and possible that gold speculators have already priced in this ‘good news’.
Demand for alternative investments is waning, placing pressure on the gold price, as data continues to show an improving US economy, boosting the dollar and equities. The rapid climb in stocks and equities may work in gold’s favour as speculators see that there is too much euphoria in the markets at present and buy the yellow metal as a hedge against a slowdown.
Silver climbed 0.5% this morning. ETF Securities said in an emailed note that “Over the past week investors have turned more positive in the outlook for the global economy and for a peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis, with more industrially sensitive commodities like silver and nickel seeing strong inflows and gold seeing outflows.” The firm saw $52 million worth of outflows from its gold ETFs last week.
Did Russia steal 300kg of gold?
A Ukrainian news website is today reporting that Ukraine’s Minister of Justice, Pavlo Petrenko, told a press conference that “We have established the fact of stealing 300 kilos of gold and precious metals from the Oschadbank’s vaults stored in Crimea within the framework of the criminal case,” The site goes onto report:
‘Petrenko stressed the Central Bank of Russia had misappropriated UAH 700 million of National Bank of Ukraine’s assets, UAH 2 billion of NBU mortgage liabilities and about UAH 4 billion cash from NBU vaults. Based on the Central Bank of Russia’s decision, all the funds were directed to the gold and currency reserves of the Russian Federation.’