GOLD and SILVER PRICES held onto the bulk of yesterday's 5% and 6.5% gains in London trade on Wednesday after rising to 6-week Dollar highs overnight in Asia.
Priced in British Pounds, gold touched its August peak at £790 per ounce.
Euro gold prices reached the highest level since mid-March, just shy of €1000.
Gold trading in China nearly doubled today from Tuesday in value terms, touching last month's new record daily volume in the Shanghai Gold Exchange's main contract.
Silver volume was heavier still after what one analyst calls yesterday's "price surge", with
contracts worth $3 billion changing hands Wednesday in Shanghai.
"Gold closed [Tuesday] above crucial resistance of $1213," says a technical chart analysis from Swiss investment and bullion bank UBS, pointing to the "38% retracement of the July-November bear trade" – a
Fibonacci number – and switching its view from "bearish" to "neutral" on silver as well.
This week's move also leads commodity analysts at Germany's Commerzbank to "neutralise [their] bearish forecast for now."
But gold prices "will need to overcome the 1255.61 October high," they add, "in order to allow for recovery to the 200 day [moving average now] at $1270." it said.
What Commerzbank calls "ongoing weakness to $1092 [remains] our longer-term downside target, and we are alert to the idea of reversal here."
World stock markets, excepting Japan, meantime rallied from Tuesday's sharp drop, with Shanghai equities recovering half of yesterday's 5% plunge.
New inflation data said Chinese consumer prices fell 0.2% last month from October, while factory-gate prices dropped 2.7% from November last year.
New UK trade data meantime showed net gold exports totaled 47 tonnes in October, taking outflows from London vaults – center of bullion storage and dealing worldwide – to 288 tonnes so far in 2014.
Net outflows from London's Good Delivery vaults were 1336 tonnes by the same point last year.
Physical flows, says London market maker Scotia Mocatta in its latest report, will become a bigger determinant of prices because "the gold market is adjusting to a different climate...
But while Scotia's analysts feel "it is difficult to get too bullish" until gold finds another "driver" of prices, they think "this is likely to come from a pick-up in physical interest.
"Hence we are watching developments in India and China closely."
Shares in major Indian jewelry manufacturers and retailers
jumped 11% in Mumbai today as rumors spread of further easing in the world No.1 consumer nation's anti-import rules, imposed in 2013 to try and cut the country's huge current account deficit with the rest of the world.
Last month the ruling BJP government of Narendra Modi ordered the central bank to
cease its 80:20 rule on gold shipments, which sparked the imports collapse of late 2013.
"Greater availability of gold now the 80:20 rule has been dropped," says Mitsubishi analyst Jonathan Butler, "may
impact silver demand negatively" after 18 months of strong Indian sales thanks to consumer substitution.
