GOLD PRICES fell hard Monday afternoon in London, dropping back through $1200 per ounce as US stock markets opened strongly higher.
New York stocks added 0.9% as Germany's Dax rose 1.7% to new all-time highs and crude oil reached fresh 2015 highs – some one-third above March's 6-year lows.
Eurozone government bonds rose across the board, nudging both German and Greek bond yields lower.
But Athens today ordered all local governments to transfer cash deposits to the central bank, Bloomberg reported, citing an
"extremely urgent and unforeseen need" ahead of Friday's Eurogroup meeting of finance ministers and early May's next repayment date for IMF bail-out loans.
Chinese property developer Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd meantime became the first such company
to default on US Dollar-denominated debt, a note from the stock exchange in Hong Kong showed, after it missed $52 million of interest payments last month.
Hong Kong's main stock index today lost 2% and Shanghai dropped 1.7% from last week's new 7-year highs after China's main securities regulator moved to curb margin trading by brokerage clients.
China's central bank yesterday eased the reserve ratio requirement for commercial banks, enabling them to lend more of the money they take in deposits.
Residential property prices rose or held steady last month in 20 districts
but fell in fifty, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday.
"Gold is trading at exactly the same price that it was at last Monday," says brokerage Marex Spectron's David Govett in London.
"The market is very much stuck at the moment, with $1200 seeming to be the pivot point for the range."
With Eurozone stock markets returning some 140% to investors since 2009 thanks to
a 230% rise in their price/earnings ratio, analysts now forecast the strongest quarterly earnings growth for Eurozone companies since Spring 2011, Reuters reports quoting StarMine data, with a forecast jump of nearly 20% – excluding rhe energy sector – contrasting with 5.4% growth in US corporate profits.
"The ongoing recovery, which started almost two years ago, is
now more firmly taking hold," said European Central Bank president Mario Draghi in a speech in Washington on Friday.
"Despite disappointing results for industrial activity," says Germany's central bank the
Bundesbank in its monthly report, "the upswing process, which got into gear at the end of last year, has not been interrupted."
Gold priced in Euros today hit a 2-week low at €1109 per ounce.
UK investors wanting to buy gold ahead of next month's hotly contested General Election saw the gold price fall below £800 per ounce for the first time in 3 weeks.
One opinion poll today put the socialist Labour Party 2% ahead of the incumbent Conservatives, while a separate poll gave the exact opposite reading.
