Gold closed a winning week with a bang on Friday, notching a fresh record and helping silver settle at its highest close in three decades.
Comex gold for December added $US3.70 to $US1,277.50 an ounce on the Comex division in New York.
Silver seesawed in early trading, but managed to end the day at a 30-year high of $US20.82 an ounce for the December contract, a rise of 4c.
Gold’s highs beat highs on Tuesday and Thursday.
The contract hit an intraday high of $US1,284.40 in electronic trading on Friday in Europe earlier on Friday, but prices faltered after worse than expected US consumer-sentiment data hit sentiment.
But gold was up 2.5% last week, the fifth weekly advance in the past six weeks.
Goldman Sachs said gold futures could reach $US1,300 an ounce sooner than the investment bank expects if quantitative easing by the Fed resumes (See Diary).
Quantitative easing, usually defined as a new round of monetary stimulus, “would likely accelerate the move to our 6-month price target and provide upside risk to our forecast,” analysts at Goldman said in a note to clients.
Reuters reported “Gold remains the strongest beneficiary of uncertainty around the expansion of fiat-currency and competitive depreciation,” quoting Australia-based analysts of Royal Bank of Scotland in a research note.
And analysts at Deutsche Bank said. “We believe exchange rate and interest rate trends as well as central bank purchases, heightened macroeconomic volatility and de-hedging programs across the gold mining sector will sustain the rally.”
That echoes the comments last week from GFMS (Air Weekly, Friday).
Gold was helped as well by a report showing that the Thai central bank boosted its gold holdings by 20% in July through on market buying.
The silver price at just under $US21, is revisiting levels not seen since 1980.
But of course, like gold, silver has actually not moved very much since 1980 when the price is adjusted for inflation.
Silver finished the week up 5%, double gold’s rise.
The oil market was very different to gold.
New York Crude oil prices fell a fourth straight session on Friday on the back of the worse than expected consumer sentiment data for the US.
That helped oil futures to their biggest percentage loss in five week.
Crude for October delivery fell 91 cents, or 1.22%, to settle at $US73.66 per barrel, trading from $US72.75 to $US75.25 during the day (The October contract expires on Tuesday).
For the week, crude prices fell $US2.79 a barrel, or 3.65%.
November crude fell 82 cents, or 1.08%, to $US74.92 a barrel.
In London ICE Brent for November fell 27 cents to settle at $US78.21 a barrel. (The October Brent contract expired on Wednesday of last week).
Cotton futures hit a new 15 year high in US trading on Friday.
December Cotton in New York 2.46 cents, or 2.6%, to 98.22 US cents a pound.
Bloomberg said the price had earlier touched 98.79 US cents, the highest level for a most-active contract since June 19, 1995.
Cotton prices jumped 7.6% last week, the strongest gain for seven months.
Prices have surged 53% in the past year.
US wheat futures for December delivery rose 20 cents, or 2.8% Friday in Chicago to close at $US7.3525 a bushel.
That was a gain of 0.3% for the week and takes the gain so far this month to 7.8%.
Corn prices also rose, adding 3.5% on Friday and is 17% so far this month.
And Copper prices hit a four and a month high Friday in New York, then retreated a touch.
Comex December metal ended at $US3.5220 a pound, up 2.85c.
For the week the December contract added 3.4%, its biggest rise in seven weeks.
In London LME copper ended at $US7720 a tonne after hitting a four and a half month peak.
