Gold Tops $1,000, Highest Since March, as Global Equities Slide

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Gold surpassed $1,000 an ounce in New York for the first time in almost a year as investors, hurt by plunging stocks and a deepening recession, sought to protect their wealth.

Gold futures for April delivery rose $25.70, or 2.6 percent, to $1,002.20 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division. Earlier the price touched $1,007.70, the highest since March 18. Gold, the only metal to advance in 2008, has rallied annually since 2000 and is up 13 percent this year.

Global stocks extended an eight-session slide, erasing 54 percent of their market value since the start of last year on concern that the economic slump may worsen and wipe out corporate earnings. Governments are lowering interest rates and spending trillions of dollars to combat the recession, spurring investors to buy bullion as a hedge against inflation. Demand has pushed gold holdings in exchange-traded funds to records.

“There’s a general fear of chaos in the financial system that’s weighing on markets across the globe,” said William O’Neill, partner at Logic Advisors in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. “This is a perfect storm for gold and its flight-to- quality characteristic is coming through.”

Gold last topped $1,000 in March as interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve propelled the dollar to an all-time low against the euro in July. The metal reached a record $1,033.90 on March 17 before retreating to as low as $681 by October.

Analysts say the rally may continue as investors lose confidence in financial assets.

Stocks and bonds have trailed gold this year. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of equities has declined 15 percent and the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury has returned 0.23 percent.

‘Fragile’ Financial Situation

“The financial situation remains extremely fragile and gold seems to be the only safe haven,” said Ron Goodis, retail trading director at Equidex Brokerage Group Inc. in Closter, New Jersey. “Currencies are losing value and holders of currencies are losing confidence. Gold may break through $1,000 and not look back.”

“One camp of investors is buying gold because of fear the fiscal stimulus packages are insufficient to bring the economy out of recession,” said Peter Fertig, owner of Quantitative Commodity Research Ltd. in Hainburg, Germany. “The other camp fears the stimulus packages will lead to inflation.”

The U.S. government has committed more than $9.7 trillion to resolve the economic crisis.

Benchmark interest rates in Japan and the U.S. are near zero while the Bank of England has slashed its main lending rate to 1 percent, the lowest ever.

Low-Rate Policies

“Given the zero interest-rate policy being pursued by central banks around the world, the incentive to hold national currency has been taken away,” said James Turk, founder of GoldMoney.com. The company had $548 million of gold and silver in storage for investors at the end of January.

Gold above $1,000 may attract more investors seeking to take advantage of the longest streak of annual advances in the metal’s price in 60 years. Assets in some of the industry’s largest exchange-traded funds are at all-time highs.

Holdings in ETF Securities Ltd.’s gold exchange-traded commodities rose to a record 7 million ounces as of Feb. 13. The SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest ETF backed by the metal, expanded to 1,029 metric tons yesterday.

Investment demand for bullion, including coins and bars, almost tripled to 399 tons in the fourth quarter, as total demand climbed 26 percent to 1,036.5 tons, the London-based World Gold Council said on Feb. 18. Retail and professional investors will continue to seek gold’s stability, said Aram Shishmanian, the council’s chief executive officer.

Silver Climbs

Silver futures for March delivery climbed 55.5 cents, or 4 percent, to $14.49 an ounce in New York. The metal has surged 28 percent this year, the best performance among the 26 contracts on the UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index. The metal fell 24 percent in 2008.

Investment in Barclays Plc’s IShares Silver Trust, the biggest ETF backed by silver, also rose to a record yesterday, topping 7,892.2 metric tons.

The highest prices in a year may encourage some investors to sell for profit, analysts said. Still, investors are boosting bets that gold may not fall below $800, options trading shows.

The most-active options on gold futures were contracts that give the right to sell the metal at $805 an ounce by April. Those contracts rose 10 percent to $2.20. They accounted for two-thirds of today’s 3,983 put trades, with about 84 percent of the contracts trading at the bid price, indicating that sellers initiated the transactions.

Chance of Decline

“Investors selling out-of-the-money puts expiring in April think there’s a slim chance gold will decline back to $800 an ounce,” said Andrew Wilkinson, the senior market analyst at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Interactive Brokers Group Inc.

Gold’s all-time inflation adjusted record is $2,224 an ounce on Jan. 21, 1980, according to a calculator on the Web site of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

“From an inflation-weighted basis, gold is still pretty cheap,” O’Neill of Logic Advisors said.