Gold and platinum were dragged under Thursday, as fund liquidation and a rising U.S. dollar provided no mercy. Gold touched below $700 for the first time since September of 2007 and platinum tumbled to its lowest level in more than four years. New York gold and platinum futures plunged 2.8 and 5.2 percent, respectively. Silver inched slightly higher by 0.4 percent.
December crude oil rose $1.09, or 1.6 percent, to close at $67.84 per barrel. The recovery comes a day after oil set it lowest level in more than 16 months. Expectations are that members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will announce a decision to cut production levels in their meeting scheduled for Friday.
December silver managed a small 4 cent gain to close at $9.50 an ounce.
January platinum plunged $44.60 to end at $812.60 an ounce. Concern that a global economic slowdown may further reduce demand was a cited negative catalyst for its decline.
Gold for December lost another $20.50 to settle at $714.70 an ounce. It reached as low as $695.20 an ounce. The yellow metal has fallen in ten out of eleven sessions, and last closed positive on Monday.
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Four numismatic articles are referenced on CoinNews every Tuesday and Thursday. These articles are not authored by us, but we recommend collectors read them for their unusual or interesting content. Have you written or know of an article that should be highlighted on CoinNews? Please let us know! Here are today’s articles:
By Jane Bryant Quinn, Bloomberg.com
Gold is for rich guys — buying physical gold, that is. The metal’s highest and best investment use is as insurance policy against a currency collapse. For that purpose, you need a lot of it, stored around the world. Owning 20 or 30 coins is nice but won’t protect your standard of living in a world where dollars are dust. Gold isn’t even a reliable hedge against inflation. It reached $850 an ounce in January 1980, a price not seen again until January 2008.
Read ‘Gold May Pay Only in Case of Maximum Despair’ »
By Tom Michael, Big Ideas, Little World
…the time has come to expand our perspectives a bit… you can see my work soon in future postings to these two new catagories. What is it? will provide an outlet for readers to send me an image of a coin they are having trouble identifying, along with a brief rundown of what they have done up to the frustration point in way of trying to catalog their item. Where to Find it will be a feature catagory for Big Ideas, little world, in which I will give readers some direction for good paths to coin collecting.
Read ‘Coin Identification, Coin Location - Made Easier’ »
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