MCX Gold closed in on Rs 26000 per 10 grams mark today as investors
eyed rather dovishcues from the latest FOMC meeting yesterday. The COMEX
Gold futures jumped along withequities last night. The FOMC statement
removed the word “patient” regardingwhen to decide to raise interest
rates. However, the statement also pointed out someweaker US economic
data recently, indicating that the Fed may not be able to raiseinterest
rates as soon as it would have liked. The COMEX gold futures had dropped
under$1150 per ounce to mark another four month low. However, a strong
wave of buying liftedthe metal from these levels and the
COMEX Gold
futures are quoting at $1172 per ounce, up$21 per ounce on the day. MCX
Gold futures are trading at Rs 25914 per 10 grams on theday, up Rs 277
per 10 grams or around 1% on the day.
US stocks closed higher
Wednesday after the Federal Open Market Committee indicated aslower pace
of rate hikes, following the removal of the word “patient” from
itspolicy statement. The S&P 500 soared 1.2%, to close at 2,099.42,
with all 10 sectorsfinishing higher on the day. The Dow surged 1.3%, to
close at 18,076.19, after tradingdown 100 points just before the
statement’s release. Productivity in the US economyhas been
disappointingly low, Yellen noted. The bright side is that low
productivity meansmore workers are needed to produce the output
demanded, she stated. She expectsproductivity to pick up in the medium
term though.
Gold speculators and large futures traders continued
to decrease their gold bullishbets last week for a sixth consecutive
week and brought the overall bullish level to itslowest point since
November, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT)
datareleased by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on
Friday. The non-commercialfutures contracts of
Comex gold futures,
traded by large speculators and hedge funds,totaled a net position of
81,892 contracts in the data reported through March 10th. Thiswas a
weekly change of -33,928 contracts from the previous week’s total of
115,820net contracts that was registered on March 3rd.
India
imported
gold worth about US$ 26 billion during the April-December
period of thecurrent fiscal, Parliament was informed. In a written reply
to a query in the Rajya Sabha,Minister of State for Finance Jayant
Sinha said 664.29 tonnes of gold worth over US$ 25.74billion was
imported during April- December period of 2014-15. The country exported
38.11tonnes of gold during the nine month period, worth US$ 1.55
billion.
