Dealing Desk Update: Bulls vs bears as economic recovery counters geopolitical fears

This week has been interesting in the physical precious metals market with online trader GoldMoney seeing the battle between bulls and bears played out by its customers.

Head of Dealing at GoldMoney, Roland Khounlivong said: 'Our gross traded volume is up 52% on last week with the buyers to sellers ratio at 1.09, almost cancelling each other out as macro-economic influences countered geo-political fears. The raft of data from the US has reinforced the expectation that growth is there and the recovery on track, and this has pushed gold below the $1300/oz level as its safe-haven properties lose some attraction.

'However, the Ukraine and Russian crisis is still giving rise for some concerns and that supported gold to its highest levels this month before it fell back, so there's still no clear trend for the gold price.

'We have seen a marginal increase in interest for palladium from our customers, which can again be possibly explained by geo-political fears as Russia is the main supplier. Whilst in terms of GoldMoney customers, silver has seen the biggest sell off as it suffered from profit taking due to its price increase during the week.

'The geographical flight of precious metals from west to east has continued this week with Switzerland the main vault impacted and Malca-Amit, Singapore, the main beneficiary.

'Next week the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Wednesday will see the issue of further tapering affecting the market and so we might see further downward pressure on the gold price unless it is counter-balanced by more geopolitical concerns.'

16:00 15/05/14: Week on week performance: Gold rose 0.9% to $1,301.00; Silver added 1.9% at $19.57; Platinum gained 2.9% to $1,470.40 while Palladium also rose 1.8% to $816.25.

NOTES TO EDITOR

For more information, and to arrange interviews, please call Gwyn Garfield-Bennett on 01534 715411, or email [email protected]

GoldMoney is one of the world's leading providers of physical gold, silver, platinum and palladium for retail and corporate customers. Customers can trade and store precious metal online easily and securely, 24 hours a day.

GoldMoney has offices in London, Jersey and Hong Kong. It offers its customers storage facilities in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK provided by the leading non-bank vault operators Brink's, Via Mat, Malca-Amit, G4S and Rhenus Logistics.

Historically gold has been an excellent way to preserve purchasing power over long periods of time. For example, today it takes almost the same amount of gold to buy a barrel of crude oil as it did 60 years ago which is in stark contrast to the price of oil in terms of national currencies such as the US dollar.

GoldMoney is regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission and complies with Jersey's anti-money laundering laws and regulations. GoldMoney has established industry-leading governance policies and procedures to protect customers' assets with independent audit reporting every 3 months by two leading audit firms.

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