GOLD CHEERS POWELL’S REMARKS

GOLD BOUNCED nearly 1 percent on Friday after US Federal Reserve chairperson Jerome Powell stopped short of signaling when the central bank would start withdrawing its economic support and reiterated his view that current price spikes were transitory.

Spot gold price was up 0.9 percent to $1 807.56 (about R26 996) an ounce by 5.19pm.

US gold futures rose 0.8 percent to $1 809.20 an ounce.

“They're not going to raise rates anytime soon and (bond-buying) taper talk won't come back into play until next (this) week's jobs report. That cleared the path for gold, and as it broke above $1 800, it's eying the next resistance level around $1 818-$1 820,” said Phillip Streible, chief market strategist at Blue Line Futures in Chicago.

In a speech to the Jackson Hole economic conference, Powell signalled the US central bank would remain patient and repeated that he wanted to avoid chasing “transitory” inflation and potentially discouraging job growth in the process – a defence in effect of the current approach to Fed policy.

“Bolstering gold, Powell used the Delta ‘shield' to buy time for more employment data before a taper announcement. It's clear that the Fed won't make a taper announcement until September or ideally November,” a trader based in New York said.

Lending a further boost to bullion, benchmark US Treasury yields and the dollar weakened after Powell's comments.

“You'd need next (this) week's jobs report to show a miss, a resurgence of the Delta variant or geopolitical risks with more news coming from Afghanistan for gold to break substantially higher,” Streible said.

Silver rose 1.4 percent to $23.88 an ounce, recording its best week since May.

Platinum advanced 2.8 percent to $1 006.77 an ounce, while palladium climbed 1.2 percent to $2 420.71 an ounce. I Reuters