Investing.com – Gold prices rose amid an uptick in safe-haven demand on concerns about turmoil in the Trump administration after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired on Tuesday.
Gold futures for April delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange rose by $6.40, or 0.49%, to $1,327.20 a troy ounce.
President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, after a falling out on how best to tackle the Iran nuclear deal. Trump hired Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.
“When you look at the Iran deal, I think it's terrible. I guess he thought it was OK,” Trump said. “I wanted to either break it or do something and he felt a little bit differently, so we were not really thinking the same.”
The comes less than week after Trump’s top economic advisor Gary Cohn resigned from the White House after Trump proceeded with tariffs on aluminium and steel imports.
Also adding to positive sentiment on gold prices was an inflation report that while in-line with forecasts did little to lift the prospect of a fourth rate hike being added to the Federal Reserve's rate-hike projections or so-called dot plot.
“February’s CPI report was supportive of the expectation for inflation to return to trend,” said BNP Paribas (PA:BNPP). “We expect core goods pricing to become weaker than in recent months on account of fading vehicles pricing strength, but for core services to remain solid, due in large part to a strong labour market and economy supporting shelter prices.”
Gold is sensitive to moves lower in bond yields, which limits the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding interest assets such as bullion.
In other precious metal trade, silver futures rose 0.45% to $16.61 a troy ounce, while platinum futures added 0.52% to $967.90 an ounce.
Copper rose 0.45% to $3.14, while natural gas added 0.36% to $2.79.