Precious Metals Hold Gains, Gold Settles at One-Month High

Gold and silver futures remained firmly in positive territory on Monday afternoon amid a broad-based rally in commodities and weakness in the U.S. dollar.

Precious metals rebounded from last week’s sell-off, with COMEX December gold futures closing with a gain of $19.70, or 1.2%, at $1,734.40 per ounce.  In doing so, the yellow metal settled at its highest level since October 18th, just over one month ago.

Silver futures fared even better than gold, as the COMEX December contract climbed as much as $0.84, or 2.6%, to $33.21 per ounce.  This marked silver’s best level in just over a month as well.

Gold and silver stocks maintained the large majority of their gains as well, with the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index (XAU) higher by 2.5% at 169.82 in afternoon trading.

One of the best performing XAU components today was Randgold Resources (GOLD), which surged 4.8% to $106.61 per share.  Randgold was lifted in part by an upgrade from RBC Capital Markets, which moved the stock to Outperform from Sector Perform.

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Other notable XAU components in the black included Hecla Mining (HL) and Royal Gold (RGLD) – which rose by 4.6% to $5.75 per share and by 2.6% to $83.03 per share, respectively.