Gold News & Info

Source:Bill Musgrave, American Gold Exchange

AustinGold futures edged up less than 0.1% to close near a six-month high above $1,826 on safe-haven inflows as yields and the dollar retreated on the final trading day of 2022. The metal finished the year with a gain of 0.4%, according front-month contracts.

New research from the Fed showed the US economy passing a key threshold that often signals a coming recession. More than half of the 50 states have falling economic activity, the St Louis Fed reported, which provides "reasonable confidence" that the nation as a whole will fall into recession in the near future.

The report follows research from the San Francisco Fed, released earlier this week, which concluded that the recent bottoming out and then rising of the unemployment rate is also a reliable signifier of coming recession.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields dipped as investors sought safety, supporting gold by decreasing the opportunity cost for holding it instead of bonds as a haven asset.

Nonetheless, the 10-year yield jumped more than 2.3% in 2022, the most in a year since 1977, as the Fed jacked interest rates from near-zero to 4.75% to fight the fiercest inflation in four decades.

The dollar slid 0.3% against major rivals but still ended the year 7.9% higher against a basket of rivals, notching its best year since 2015.

Given that a rising dollar and higher yields put strong downward pressure on the gold price, the metal's 0.4% gain in 2022 is remarkable testimony to the metal's enduring appeal as a currency of last resort during times of economic and political uncertainty.

The other precious metals were mixed. Silver slipped 0.9% but ended 2022 with a gain of 2.3%. Platinum picked up 5.6% today while palladium lost 1.1%.

At the Comex close: February gold added 20 cents, to $1,826.20; March silver slid 21 cents to $24.04; April platinum picked up $17.90 to $1,082.90; and March palladium dropped $18.40 to $1,798 an ounce.