LONDON (Commodity Online): With the exception of palladium, prices stabilised and started to recover on Friday after a weak performance over most of last week, said Barclays Capital in a research note.
Silver prices led the gains up 1.9% to settle at $32.27/oz while Gold gained 0.2% to close at $1722.4/oz as the dollar weakened, US equity markets weakened as the technocratic governments in Greece and Italy remained on track amid continued pressure on southern European governments to deliver fiscal and economic reform.
According to Barclays, investor interest in gold has continued to build with physically backed gold ETPs up 2.8 tonnes on Friday taking flows for the month to date to 53.2 tonnes, doubling the inflows registered in October at 25.8 tonnes.
Total metal held in trust is now at its highest since 8 August. Short-term investor interest has stabilised; however, the latest CFTC data only cover data to 15 November, before the steep price correction across the precious metals. Non-commercial positions to 15 November rose by 3.5k lots as fresh longs (5.2k lots) more than offset fresh shorts (1.7k lots), taking net fund length to a two-month high.
Indeed in the absence of strong physical demand, investor interest will have more ground to make up. Speculative interest has also grown across the other precious metals with Comex Silver and Nymex Palladium being chiefly driven by fresh longs and Nymex Platinum by short covering activity.
Tactical positioning across the complex has recovered to September levels. While platinum ETP flows are also positive this month, silver and palladium remain in negative territory. Silver holdings fell by 68 tonnes on Friday.
