Investing.com - From near the jaws of $1,700 an ounce, gold bulls are back to $1,900 safety, after the Middle East’s latest crisis led to a huge leap Friday that topped a week of incredible price swings in the yellow metal.
Gold’s most-active futures contract on New York’s Comex, December, settled at $1,941.50 per ounce, up $58.50, or 3.1%, on the day. For the week, the benchmark gold futures showed a gain of 5.2%, its most in a week since March.
The spot price of gold, more closely watched by some traders than futures, was at $1,928.42 by 12:48 ET (16:48 GMT), up $59.55, or 3.2%. Last Friday, the spot price, which reflects real-time trades in bullion, hit an intraday low of $1,810.10 — less than $10 above $1,700 territory.
Friday’s move up was the biggest in a day for spot gold since March 17. The rounded-up weekly gain of 5% in the current week was also the largest since March.
Gold’s latest jump came after the Israeli government late on Thursday warned more than 1 million people in Northern Gaza to evacuate the area as its war with Hamas escalated. Talk was also growing that Israel was preparing for a major land assault on Gaza.
“Growing chaos in the Middle Easter continues to fuel safe-haven demand for gold as a 2% rally into the weekend also puts pressure on bears in the marketplace,” Neils Christensen wrote on kitco.com, the website of the bullion trading brand of the same name.
More startling, the gold rally came as the US Dollar Index, or DXY, ticked up for a second day in a row, resuming the greenback’s run-up over the last three months, which was interrupted only by last week’s slide. Gold typically moves in opposite direction to the dollar.