GOLD PRICES topped new 8-week highs at $1950 per ounce in London trade Tuesday, rising again as European stock markets followed New York and Asia lower amid the fast-worsening winter wave of Covid-19.
Interest rates on major government bonds meantime ticked higher ahead of the
Senate "run-off" vote in the US state of Georgia, with a possible Democrat win meaning that incoming President Joe Biden would face less resistance to his massive borrowing and stimulus plans.
Rising above $1950 for the first time since November 9th's Pfizer
vaccine news crushed gold by $100 per ounce, bullion prices have now risen 2.5% so far in 2021.
Despite the rise in US Treasury yields today, the rate of inflation implied by 10-year TIPS bonds rose faster, edging above 2.0% for the first time since spring 2018 and driving the real rate of interest down below minus 1.08%, the multi-decade low hit when gold prices peaked above $2000 per ounce last August.
Gold priced in the Euro also rose steeply on Tuesday, up 2.1% from last weekend to touch a 7-week high of £1587 – a new record high when first reached in mid-April.
"Gold was subject to modest profit-taking leading into [Tuesday's] Chinese open...[where] the on-shore discount in Shanghai held toward $10 and provided little in the way of directional flow."
Prior to the start of the Covid Crisis last New Year, gold prices in China – the metal's No.1 mining and consumer nation – showed an average $9 per ounce premium to London quotes.
But Shanghai has now offered a disincentive to new imports from London, suggesting a glut of supply over demand, without break since 24 March, the day after the UK – home to the world's central gold trading and storage hub – imposed its first anti-Covid lockdown.
Nine months after the aviation industry called for Covid tests to reduce transmission, Britain will also make a negative result compulsory "for some travellers to the UK"
according to The Independent.
"The ban on flights out of South Africa", where a new variant of Covid-19 may render some of the new vaccines less effective, "is
going to hit precious metals exports," Reuters quotes analyst Rhona O'Connell at brokerage StoneX, "[because] gold, platinum and palladium are transported by air, and the majority of that is on passenger flights."
So-called crypto-currency Bitcoin meantime
rose to $31,000 – a new all-time high when first reached on Saturday – after plunging 14.5% from Sunday's new top above $34,000.
