By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Gold prices fell back below $1,650 an ounce on Wednesday despite continued volatility in stock markets, amid mixed signals from the U.S. about what policy action to expect to contain the impact from the global coronavirus outbreak.
By 12:12 PM ET (1612 GMT), gold futures for delivery on the Comex exchange were down 0.7% at $1,648.75, while spot gold was down less than 0.1% at $1,648.45.
Silver also weakened, as lower expected industrial demand outweighed any bid from precious metals investors. Silver futures fell 0.5% to $16.86 an ounce. Platinum futures rebounded 0.5% to $874.25 an ounce, while copper futures just held above $2.50 a pound, down 0.9% on the day.
Prices have been drifting this week, even though expectations of further reductions in interest rates (which would increase the relative attraction of gold vis-à-vis bonds) have strengthened.
However, the next major move seems predicated on whether U.S. measures to support the economy will be enough to avert a fresh wave of panic selling in risk assets. Nerves have calmed in the last couple of days, with the benchmark United States 10-Year Treasury yield returning to 0.80% from a low of 0.32%.
Earlier Wednesday, the Bank of England became the latest major central bank to ease monetary policy, lowering its key rate by 50 basis points to 0.25%. However, U.K. bond yields barely moved, in part because the U.K. government later unveiled its biggest stimulus package in a decade to cope with the economic fallout of Covid-19. That not only reduces the risk of a worst-case scenario, but also greatly expands bond supply, putting something of a floor under yields.
The BoE's measures further strengthened expectations for a package of stimulus measures from the European Central Bank at Thursday’s governing council meeting. However, as ABN Amro analyst Georgette Boele wrote in a research note, such expectations are already largely priced in.
“Investors are still hoping that market panic will send gold prices much higher,” Boele wrote. “We are very cautious. The safe haven behavior of gold is far from stable as recent weeks have shown and long gold is still a crowded trade.”
According to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitment of Traders report, net speculative long positions in gold actually eased last week slightly but remain close to record highs.