Investing.com - Gold prices rose to their highest levels in two weeks on Tuesday as the International Monetary Fund again cut its forecast for global growth this year, stoking demand for haven assets.
As of 10:00 AM ET (1400 GMT). the gold futures contract on Comex was up $5.85, or 0.5%, at $1,307.95 a troy ounce. Spot gold was up 0.5% to $1,303.93 an ounce.
The IMF shaved another 0.2 percentage point off its forecast for world gross domestic product growth this year and now sees it rising only 3.3% - the slowest rate since 2016. It's the third time the IMF has cut its growth forecast in the last six months.
"The possibility of further downward revisions is high, and the balance of risks remains skewed to the downside," the Washington-based Fund said in its World Economic Outlook, released ahead of its spring meeting at the weekend.
The IMF again highlighted threats to free trade as one of the greatest risks to growth, a warning that came only a day after President Donald Trump raised the specter of new tariffs on European Union imports in response to what he said was damage sustained by the U.S. from EU subsidies to aerospace giant Airbus.
Analysts were not too frightened by the outburst, pointing to the fact that the EU's promise of swift retaliation when Trump last threatened to slap tariffs on European cars helped keep a lid on that dispute for more than a year.
The news flow nonetheless supported other haven assets as well as gold. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note dipped to 2.49% from 2.51%.
Sentiment toward gold remains buoyed by the reassurance of solid central bank buying. At the weekend, China's central bank announced it had bought another 360,000 ounces in March for its reserves, while Russia's central bank reserves data suggest it has bought more than $2.3 billion worth of bullion since the start of the year, according to Investing.com calculations.
Elsewhere, silver futures rose 0.3% to $15.26 an ounce, while palladium futures rose 1.1% to $1,368.20 an ounce. Copper, meanwhile, shrugged off suggestions of a global slowdown, adding another 0.3% to $2.9410 a pound.