Gold soars as dollar continues to weaken

Posted Oct 13th 2009 1:50PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Forecasts, Market Matters, Money and Finance Today, Commodities, Oil, Financial Crisis

The U.S. dollar continued to decline today, and has helped push gold prices up sharply in today's action.

The dollar has been very weak lately, and as more concern mounts of the dollar's strength more investors are rushing into the precious metal, which traded up as high as $1,069.70 today, and is currently up $1.70 an ounce to $1,059.20.

The euro rose as high as $1.4876, well above Monday's price of $1.4776. It is right at the psychological $1.50 level, and should it pass through that mark it could be in for a lot more upside in the months to come.

Citigroup has raised its forecast for gold, stating that the precious metal will trade at $1,025 an ounce in the next three months. This was a sizable increase from its previous estimate of $950 an ounce. Looking out for the next 6 to 12 months, it predicts even higher prices, with a forecast of $1,050 an ounce compared to its previous estimate of $975.

Inflation fears have definitely been the driving force behind gold's recent surge. President Obama has taken the U.S. marketable debt to a record as he tries to spend the country out of recession. While this could be one of the reasons why the nation appears to be emerging from the recession, it will certainly increase money supply and raise the risk of future inflation.

A lot of analysts are also fearing that the Federal Reserve is not going to reverse its recession beating strategy soon enough to fight off the inflation that seems to be definitely coming our way. In order to help consumers out, the Federal Reserve lowered its main interest rate to almost 0 and it has a tough job figuring out exactly when it should start to lift these rates. Too quickly and spending will stall, too late and the dollar will continue to devalue and send gold prices higher.

Oil prices are also reacting to the lower dollar, and are once again trading higher, picking up $0.42 on the day to $73.69, and hit a high earlier in the session of $74.47. Both gold and oil are natural hedges against the dollar, and should continue to move higher.

For a better idea of how the dollar has been behaving, let's close with a chart of the U.S. Dollar Index and you can see just how bad things have gotten: