After a brief pause that was just a short-term bounce within a bullish trend, gold prices resumed the ascent on Thursday, though failed to challenge the six-month highs close to $1280 reached the day before. On Friday, the price has refreshed a six-month high above $1281 and looks set to target the key $1300 barrier. The yellow met-al continues to attract demand on correction attempts, which confirms its strong commitment to rise further.
The precious metal finds the buying momentum from a combination of weaker dollar and falling stock markets. Investor concerns over the economy add to the upside pressure on the bullion. By the way, as the U.S. Confer-ence Board report showed, consumer confidence index fell more than expected in December, down to 128.1 from November's multi-year high at 135.7. More importantly, the expectations index dropped below the 100 mark from 112.3 earlier, which shows that US consumers are getting more concerned about future economic growth.
All this play’s into gold’s hands and could continue to fuel safe haven demand in 2019 should the global econ-omy lose momentum further. But at the same time, the major central banks could at some stage delay monetary policy tightening, which in turn may cap the downside pressure on risky assets and limit the metal’s bullish po-tential some time later.
The precious metal finds the buying momentum from a combination of weaker dollar and falling stock markets. Investor concerns over the economy add to the upside pressure on the bullion. By the way, as the U.S. Confer-ence Board report showed, consumer confidence index fell more than expected in December, down to 128.1 from November's multi-year high at 135.7. More importantly, the expectations index dropped below the 100 mark from 112.3 earlier, which shows that US consumers are getting more concerned about future economic growth.
All this play’s into gold’s hands and could continue to fuel safe haven demand in 2019 should the global econ-omy lose momentum further. But at the same time, the major central banks could at some stage delay monetary policy tightening, which in turn may cap the downside pressure on risky assets and limit the metal’s bullish po-tential some time later.