Gold Prices Up, Closing Out Record 2010
(Gold market story updated for settlement prices.)
NEW YORK (
) --
posted strong gains on New Year's Eve, putting an appropriate cap on another year of record returns.
Gold for February delivery added $15.50 to $1,421.40 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price settled at its high for the session. Earlier Friday, it traded as low as $1,404.60.
index fell 0.59% to $79.02 while the euro was up slightly to $1.3345 vs. the dollar. The spot gold price jumped by $15, according to Kitco's gold index.
Extremely light trading volumes on New Year's Eve had a "vacuum trade" effect, pushing gold prices higher, said Darin Newsom, senior commodities analyst at Telvent DTN in Baltimore.
More fundamentally, however, Friday's action put to rest the fear from some investors that an end-of-the-year selloff awaited gold and other hot commodities markets. The lessons of 2010's wild ride in commodities of all kinds were topmost on the minds of many investors and traders Friday. "Commodities are no longer short term investments," Newsom said, reflecting on those lessons. "The day of the daytrader is gone."
>> Video: The Next Big Gold Rush
Looking ahead to next year, many gold bulls are calling for the yellow metal to surpass $1,600 an ounce. Newsom said that midway through January gold prices may begin to test the record highs -- $1,432.50 -- reached earlier in December. "I think we'll probably test that high, take out that high, and then we'll have see what these outside markets will do," Newsom said, referring to equities, the U.S. dollar and other commodities such as crude oil.
Money could move out of gold into other markets, in other words -- or vice versa. Nonetheless, there's more than enough economic and political uncertainty in the world, Newsom said, that investors will almost certainly continue to burnish gold's status as the best safe haven available.
were gaining about 42 cents to $30.94, while copper added more than 8 cents to $4.45, setting another record high.
The gold exchange-traded fund
SPDR Gold Shares
(GLD) - Get Report
was up 1% to $138.48 Friday.
, a risky but potentially profitable way to
, were mostly in the green. Shares of
Newmont Mining
(NEM) - Get Report
were rising 0.6% to $61.53 while
Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold
(FCX) - Get Report
was adding 0.9% to $120.06. Among other gold stocks,
Yamana Gold
(AUY) - Get Report
was adding 0.9% to $12.80 and
Agnico-Eagle Mines
(AEM) - Get Report
was losing 0.3% to $76.75.
-- Written by Scott Eden in New York
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