Investing.com - Gold futures rallied in North American trade on Tuesday, as a series of explosions in Brussels sparked a wave of risk aversion, boosting appetite for safe-haven assets.
Risk sentiment took a hit after explosions tore through the departure hall of Brussels airport on Tuesday morning killing at least 26 people and injuring 35 others and a second blast struck a metro station in the capital shortly afterwards.
The blasts at the airport and metro station occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in November militant attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.
Gold for April delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped $9.30, or 0.75%, to trade at $1,253.50 a troy ounce by 13:40GMT, or 9:40AM ET.
A day earlier, gold lost $10.10, or 0.81%, as investors digested comments from Federal Reserve officials on the timing of the next U.S. rate hike.
Both San Francisco Fed President John Williams and Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said in separate news reports that a rate hike could come as early as next month. However, neither are voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee.
The market will be paying attention to a pair of FOMC member speeches on Tuesday to further judge the balance of opinion among policymakers on the prospect of further rate hikes.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans is scheduled to speak in the afternoon on economic conditions and monetary policy, while Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker is due to speak in the evening on growth and the role of economic policies.
Prices of the yellow metal are up nearly 16% so far this year as investors seek safe havens in the face of mounting instability in other financial markets and as fears over a China-led global economic slowdown make it tougher for the Fed to raise rates.
The U.S. central bank surprised markets last week by cutting its rate hike projections more than expected, down from four to two in 2016, citing the potential impact from weaker global growth and financial market turmoil on the U.S. economy.
Investors and economists dialed back their own rate hike expectations in wake of the Fed’s surprisingly dovish outlook, with traders of interest-rate futures now seeing no rate rise before September. A gradual path to higher rates is seen as less of a threat to gold prices than a swift series of increases.
Also on the Comex, silver futures for May delivery rose 2.8 cents, or 0.18%, to trade at $15.87 a troy ounce during morning hours in New York, while copper futures shed 1.4 cents, or 0.59%, to $2.279 a pound.