Gold rose for a second day in London, extending its biggest gain in almost three weeks, as a decline in equities boosted the metal’s appeal as a haven. Bullion added 1.4 percent yesterday, the most since March 19, as a rally in global equities stalled on speculation the credit crisis will deepen. Stocks dropped today, limiting the MSCI World Index’s gain in the past month to 20 percent. Gold fell 3.7 percent in the period. “Demand for safe-haven assets has resurfaced,” said Manqoba Madinane, an analyst at Standard Bank Group Ltd. in Johannesburg. With “earnings reporting season under way, most investors are staying shy of risky assets, which is benefiting precious metals.” Gold for immediate delivery gained as much as $8.15, or 0.9 percent, to $889.40 an ounce and traded at $889.31 by 11:22 a.m. local time. June futures added 0.8 percent to $890.70 an ounce in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division. The metal rose to $887.25 in the morning “fixing” in London, used by some mining companies to sell production, from $879.75 at yesterday’s afternoon fixing. Gold reached $1,006.29 an ounce on Feb. 20, before falling as a surge in equities curbed demand for the metal and scrap supplies increased. Bullion is little changed this year. ‘Terrible’ Earnings Investors George Soros and Marc Faber predicted this week that the past month’s rebound in equities would falter. The rally is a “dead cat bounce” as companies report “terrible” earnings, Hugh Young, managing director of Aberdeen Asset Management Plc’s Asian unit, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview. Alcoa Inc., the biggest U.S. aluminum producer and the first company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to report results, yesterday kicked off the earnings season by announcing a second straight quarterly loss. Gold may “easily” reach $1,000 an ounce and might climb to a record this year as demand for a hedge against inflation outpaces an expanding scrap supply and weaker usage by jewelers, researcher GFMS Ltd. said yesterday. The metal reached an all- time high of $1,032.70 in March 2008. “The reasons why investors bought gold -- fears of longer- term inflation and currency debasement -- remain intact,” UBS AG analyst John Reade wrote in a note today. Once “gold has stabilized, we expect bottom-fishers to begin the next cycle of investment.” ETF Holdings Investment in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest exchange- traded fund backed by bullion, was unchanged for a second day at 1,127.37 metric tons yesterday. Assets in the fund, which has overtaken Switzerland as the world’s sixth-largest gold holding, reached a record 1,127.44 tons on April 2. Gold investment in ETF Securities Ltd.’s exchange-traded commodities climbed by a record 1.3 million ounces in the first quarter, the company said in a report dated yesterday. That’s more than three times the inflows in the fourth quarter. Among other metals for immediate delivery in London, silver added 0.6 percent to $12.34 an ounce. Platinum lost 0.8 percent to $1,157.75 an ounce, and palladium was 0.1 percent lower at $225.25 an ounce.

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