BLBG: Gold Rises in London as Price Drop Lures Buyers, Dollar Weakens
By Nicholas Larkin
Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Gold rose in London after yesterday's decline spurred buying of the physical metal and as the dollar weakened against the euro, adding to the bullion's appeal as an alternative investment.
The dollar fell as much as 0.9 percent against the euro today. The U.S. currency is up 16 percent this year against the euro as gold has declined 12 percent. Bullion, which lost 1.9 percent yesterday amid a drop in global equities and crude oil, generally moves in the opposite direction to the dollar.
``Everybody's looking at the dollar at the moment,'' Narayan Gopalakrishnan, a Geneva-based trader at MKS Finance, one of Switzerland's four bullion refiners, said by phone today. ``We're seeing buying interest'' from Asia, he said.
Gold for immediate delivery gained as much as $7.58, or 1 percent, to $739.28 an ounce and traded at $735.24 as of 9:24 a.m. in London. December futures rose $1.20 to $734 an ounce in electronic trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Bullion has lost 29 percent since reaching a record $1,032.70 an ounce in March as investors liquidated their commodity holdings to raise cash amid the global credit crisis.
Among other metals for immediate delivery, silver added 0.2 percent to $9.77 an ounce. Platinum rose $14, or 1.7 percent, to $836.50, and palladium was 50 cents, or 0.2 percent, higher at $218 an ounce.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Larkin in London at nlarkin1@bloomberg.net