COMEX Gold, Silver Pare Gains, XAU Rises 0.5%

Gold and silver futures remained in positive territory Tuesday afternoon but gave back a considerable portion of their earlier gains.

COMEX gold for December delivery, which hit an intra-day high of $1,740.50 per ounce this morning, settled up by just $3.10, or 0.2%, at $1,734.90 per ounce.  As for COMEX December silver futures – which earlier rose $0.24, or 0.7%, to $33.87 per ounce – this afternoon they hovered back near unchanged at $33.63 per ounce.

The decline in precious metals did not coincide with a rebound in the U.S. Dollar Index, however, as it remained lower by 0.7% at 79.825.

While so far this week gold has been unable to build on last week’s rally, the outlook for the yellow metal remains bright – according to Standard Chartered analyst Daniel Smith.

In a report to clients, Smith wrote that “The overwhelming consensus is in favor of more (quantitative easing) in a significant way. Let’s assume that happens. Gold is going to go higher and $1,800 looks very likely in the short term, but partly because the inflation risks are higher than they were.”

He went on to say that “The (U.S.) dollar is always partly driving these things, so obviously the massive weakness has tended to lift everything…Investors are still very keen on gold. That is the key thing, even though the moves are not as volatile as those that you see in things like silver.”

Gold and silver shares also relinquished a portion of their advance on Tuesday, but continued to outperform precious metals.  The Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index (XAU) remained up by 0.5% at 177.36 after earlier climbing to 179.10.

Notable XAU components in the black on Tuesday were Eldorado Gold (EGO), Goldcorp (GG), and Silver Standard Resources (SSRI).  EGO moved up by 3.3% at $14.62, GG by 0.6% at $42.42, and SSRI by 1.4% at $15.00 per share.