GOLD INVESTMENT prices slipped further for Dollar and Euro investors in London trade Thursday, briefly spiking after new US data showed stronger-than-forecast retail sales for May but a surprise jump in the number of people claiming jobless benefits last week.
Major Eurozone stock markets meantime added over 1% as government bond prices fell again.
Dollar gold prices for wholesale investment bars then fell back through the $1180 per ounce level, seen by technical analysts as 'support' from late March to last week.
Gold priced in Euros held 1% above this week's new 5-month low of €1037.
UK savers wanting to make a gold investment saw the price in Sterling fall to 4-week lows beneath £760 per ounce.
"As investor confidence in global financial stability increases, so does risk appetite," says a new report on gold's investment appeal from French bank and bullion dealer Natixis.
"Hence the role of gold as a safe haven has become significantly less attractive, even for risk-averse investors."
Both the
Bloomberg and
Reuters news-wires note that the giant SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEArca:GLD) – the world's largest ETF by value at its 2011 peak – ended Wednesday needing less bullion to back its shares than any time since September 2008, just when the failure of US investment bank Lehman Brothers marked the steepest phase of the global financial crash.
Neither however note that the
iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca:SLV) again added bullion to its backing yesterday, expanding more than 3% from late-May's 12-month lows to need 10,168 tonnes of metal.
Users of BullionVault, the world's No.1 physical gold and silver investment provider online, this week grew their
aggregate gold holdings to a record 34 tonnes and added another 1.5 tonnes of silver to own 506 tonnes in total.
Greek bond yields meantime continued their uptrend Thursday, spiking to late-May's 1-month highs at 11.88% as Athens' debt prices fell but holding more than one percentage point beneath April's 2.5-year peak.
Now due to collect €1.6 billion from Athens on the last day of June, the International Monetary Fund said its negotiation team today left talks in Brussels without making any progress.
"The ball is
very much in Greece’s court," said IMF spokesman Gerry Rice in Washington, repeating the phrase already used twice this week by Eurozone officials.
"Greece, with the greatest of respect to those good people," is an irrelevance within the precious metals markets," says David Govett in London at brokers Marex Spectron –
reportedly now up for sale after returning to profit in 2014.
With gold investments "little use as a hedge against global problems," says Govett, "The metals are being infuenced purely by the Dollar and Fed announcements."
The Federal Reserve's policy team meet next Tuesday and will announce any change to rates – now held at 0% since early 2009 – the next day.
