Soaring gold price is tipped to breach $2000 barrier
Gold soared to yet another record today with analysts predicting it could soon breach the $2000 an ounce mark as investors continue to buy it as one of the safest havens in a troubled world.
Gold has risen by more than 25% since July as punters have digested a string of weak economic data from the United States and fretted over the inability of the eurozone to come up with a credible answer to its debt crisis.
Platinum also jumped on the safe-haven bandwagon, rising to a three year high, 1% to $1895.
Spot gold, the price for immediate delivery, touched $1888.90 an ounce, a gain of more than 2%. Silver rose by 2.5% to $43.975 an ounce. "We are not expecting anything supporting the US economy or the macrodata for at least a couple of months. Europe we regard as even weaker," said Tom Price, global commodity analyst at UBS.
"We are thinking $1900-$2000 for gold over the very short period of time is a likely target."
Investors are hoping US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke may signal a third round of quantitative easing when central bankers meet at Jackson Hole later this week.
Recent moves by the Swiss and Japanese central banks to intervene to try to push their currencies down from record levels had increased demand for precious metals.
