Gold continues to rise – also thanks to Trump

The week leading up to Easter treated gold investors well, assisted initially by geopolitical events.

Following his strike on Syria last Friday, Trump took to Twitter to state “north Korea is looking for trouble” in his inimitable way. This caused the markets to seek safe havens.

Furthermore, in the run-up to the French presidential elections, poll results for the thus far strong (and market friendly) candidate Macron slumped this week, foreshadowing a close race between four candidates and weakening the euro.

The European currency rebounded yesterday evening following Trump’s confusing interview statements in which he made a complete turnaround from his prior position. He lamented the dollar “getting too strong” and gave a thumbs-up to a low interest rate policy. This means that he could in fact very well live with an unaggressive Fed interest rate strategy, all bearing in mind that Yellen’s term will come to an end on 3 February 2018.

These more or less presidential statements sent ten-year US government bonds’ returns to their lowest level of 2017 and caused the US dollar to depreciate against the majority of currencies.

Last Friday, gold traded at 1,254 US$/ounce. It has since climbed and remained at its highest level since after the US presidential election in November, to 1,288 US$/ounce. Xetra-Gold has seen a similar development. From 37.80 €/gram last week Friday, it rose to its weekly high by almost 3 per cent to 38.88€/gram and currently trades at 38.85 €/gram.

A number of economic data are next up for publication (among them tomorrow’s US retail sales and consumer prices and Monday’s GDP data for China). Political developments should however prove far more influential, with the Turkish referendum coming up on Sunday and the first round of the French presidential elections in France on 23 April, as well as the unpredictable geopolitical agenda of the US.

I wish all our readers a happy and sunny Easter weekend.