Gold Prices Sink to a 5-Year Low

[Purveyor]

Gold has no appeal as a commodity or alternative to currencies, Macquarie Group Ltd. said on Friday, renewing the selloff that’s driven prices to a five-year low.

Futures for August delivery slid 0.9 percent to $1,084.10 an ounce as of 11:54 a.m. on the Comex in New York, after touching $1,072.30, the lowest for a most-active contract since February 2010. The metal dropped 4.2 percent this week, the most since October. Trading volume was 96 percent above the 100-day average for the time of day.

Investors are bailing on gold on expectations the Federal Reserve will soon raise interest rates as the economy strengthens. The price drop has been extreme and it may not be over yet, Macquarie analysts including London-based Matthew Turner said in a report Friday. The bank lowered its 2016 average gold forecast by 15 percent to $1,163.

“The mood is very poor,” Grant Sporre, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG, said by phone from London. “The feeling is that the metals are pricing in rate cuts in the U.S., but I expect that we’ll still see a further leg down when the event actually occurs.”

Gold has fallen about 8.5 percent this year. Higher borrowing costs curb the appeal of gold, which doesn’t pay interest or give returns like other assets including equities. Economists project a 50 percent chance for a rate increase in September. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index has risen 19 percent in the past year.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-23/gold-set-for-longest-run-of-weekly-losses-since-12-on-rate-bets

[a kennedy]

1. and what the h*ll is going on in the stock market.....I'm going to have to get a job.....

my retirement fund is taking a beating AGAIN. D*mn.

[yellowcanine]

3. Dow Down 0.75% at 2 PM - not exactly a beating.

17,598.47 Price decrease 133.45 (0.75%)

If you are going to worry about a decline like that you should get out of the stock market. Seriously. That's nothing.

[a kennedy]

5. It seems like it's just been going down for the last few weeks.....

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=DJIA&insttype=Index

Just seems it's on a downward trend.......

[yellowcanine]

7. Not really. Been trending sideways between 17500 and just over 18000 for the last month or so.

Not panty wad time at all. For all of the uncertainty - falling oil prices, Iran deal, Greek crisis, interest rates etc. it is actually holding its own quite well. And the way I look at it, every time a dip coincides with my biweekly pay, I just get more stocks for the same money. When it does come back up, as it always does, I will be that much better off.

Even someone who is retired and expects to live another 20-30 years should be keeping at least 50% of their retirement portfolio in equities and plowing any excess funds from minimum distributions back into the stock market. With interest rates where they are it is the only way to keep up with inflation and also build value.

[meow2u3]

2. Gold is still selling at an inflated price

I remember, before Shrub was installed in the White House, gold selling at about $300 an ounce. Suddenly, the price of gold skyrocketed to over $1,100/oz. So gold is probably starting to come back down to earth, kinda like a pump-and-dump scam.

[yellowcanine]

4. Glenn Beck fans will be running for cover.

Bless their greedy little hearts.

[underahedgerow]

6. COOL! Buy low, sell high. I love buying gold, especially jewelry that I can wear and enjoy for a

while, then when I get bored with it and the prices are higher, I sell it off. Multi-year cyclical. I never buy less than 18K and always look for 24k, anything less is only worth smelting, which is a pain in the batootski but do-able.

This technique has served me really well over the past 20 years! I collect broken bits as I find them as well just for the melt down value.