Gold Rises After US Durable Goods Decline

Gold futures climbed as a slump in orders for U.S. durable goods signaled that weaker foreign economies are weighing on American expansion, boosting demand for haven assets.

Demand for all durable goods — items meant to last at least three years — declined 3.4 percent, the worst performance since August, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Slowing expansion may prompt the Federal Reserve to hold off on raising interest rates. Policy makers will meet this week.

“That durable goods number was notably weak with lower revisions, so at the margin it pushes the first Fed rate hike further out in time,” Tai Wong, the director of commodity products trading at BMO Capital Markets Corp., said in a telephone interview. “Pushing the rate hike back tends to be bullish for other assets including gold, which is dollar denominated.”

The metal is up more than 8 percent this year as stagnating economies challenge policy makers to generate new ways to buoy growth. The euro traded near an 11-year low against the dollar after the European Central Bank last week expanded its bond-buying program to include government bonds, boosting demand for gold as an alternative to currencies that are being revalued.

Gold futures for April delivery rose 0.6 percent to $1,287.80 an ounce at 9:20 a.m. on the Comex in New York. Prices climbed in the previous three weeks.

via Bloomber

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza