Gold Holds Onto Gains to Settle Higher

Investing.com – So long as Wall Street hits record highs investors can expect gold to show some resilience.

8830|Gold futures}} for February delivery on New York’s COMEX settled up $5.80, or 0.4%, at $1,560.10 per ounce.

Spot gold, which tracks live trades in bullion, was up $6.11, or 0.4%, at $1,558.34 by 2:30 PM ET (19:30 GMT).

Gold rallied as the three major U.S. indexes hit record highs in early trading – with the Dow topping 29,000 for the first time – and managed to hold onto those gains into settlement.

The yellow metal got some support later in the day as bond prices firmed on weaker-than-expected December payroll growth. That pushed interest lower, making non-yielding gold more attractive.

While gold typically takes the opposite route to stocks, since last year the correlation appears to have changed as investors seek insurance against the possibility of a sudden reversal on Wall Street after a streak of record highs in stocks since the start of the fourth quarter.

Spot gold closed last year up 18% while gold futures gained 16%. Both are up almost 3% since the start of 2020.

“Gold continues its new higher trading range along with better stocks and dollar firmness,” said George Gero, precious metals analyst at RBC Wealth Management in New York. “As we see, you can’t count out gold with higher stocks and a firm dollar.”

The dollar index, another normally contrarian trade to gold, hit a one-week high of 97.303 on Friday before turning flat at 97.07.

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