GOLD INCREASES ON SOFTER DOLLAR

Lorrie Freeman

3/3/2015 12:11:00 PM

Gold recovered Tuesday morning after briefly dropping below $1,200 an ounce. “Prices…seem to be forming a nice technical base in the low $1,190s,” Deutsche Boerse’s MNI senior analyst Tony Walters said. NRC Commodities analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov reiterated this statement, saying, “Gold…clearly found some support around $1,200 [per ounce] at the start of this month and people are still looking at U.S. data.” Non-farm payroll numbers and the launch of money printing by the European Central Bank will have investors closely watching the market.

Gasoline prices are expected to increase another 10 percent before peaking in the spring. “I do suspect that March will probably deliver the largest increases,” GasBuddy.com Chief Oil Analyst Tom Kloza said. “I think they top out, and then I think they drop back.” Gas is averaging $3.41 per gallon nationally, which is up 6 cents from last week, according to AAA. Unleaded gasoline is expected to rise to a national average of $3.70 per gallon by Easter, April 20. “The worry I have for the summer is hurricane season. We have not had a hurricane strike the U.S. since we have been an export country. We export 1.3 million barrels of diesel and probably looking at exports of gasoline that are 700,000 barrels a day,” Kloza added.

At 1:12 p.m. (ET), the APMEX Precious Metals spot prices were:

• Gold, $1,207.70 Down $3.30
• Silver, $16.34 Down $0.18
• Platinum, $1,190.50 Down $0.40
• Palladium, $832.60 Up $0.60