NEW YORK (TheStreet ) -- Gold prices were rising Thursday alongside equities as investors were able to stop selling gold to raise cash.
Gold for December delivery was up $12.10 at $1,653.70 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price has traded as high as $1,656.20 and as low as $1,636.60an ounce, while the spot gold price was adding $9, according to Kitco's gold index.
Silver prices were rising $1.22 cents at $31.57 an ounce while the U.S. dollar index was losing 0.09% at $78.92.
No doubt gold moving alongside stocks is a puzzlement for many experts as the two typically have an inverse relationship. "Gold's unusual behavior at present can be explained by events on the futures market," wrote Commerzbank in a morning note. When stocks rally, investors have less need to liquidate assets like gold. But Commerzbank says there are still a lot of speculative long positions in the gold market, which investors might sell if prices rise. As profit taking weighs on gold, then physical buyers will re-enter the market.
"This pattern is likely to mean the price of gold fluctuating for quite some time within a broad sideways range before a new upturn begins." A new trend might be hard to find this week with investors focusing on the death of Apple(AAPL_) founder, Steve Jobs, as well as two interest rate decisions from the European Central Bank and Bank of England Thursday and Friday's reading on employment in the U.S.
Briefing.com expects the private sector to have added 90,000 jobs in September after adding only 17,000 in August. A better reading could boost equities and help markets two-day rally, which might push gold higher as there is less need to sell. Of course, the opposite could be true as well, a positive jobs number could give investors less of a reason to own the safe haven.
A bad number, on the flip side, could either help gold shine as a safe haven or could prompt more forced liquidation.
Jeff Clark, Casey Research's Senior Precious Metals Analyst, says "when the market falls I think that investors will seek out liquidity and they will use an easily tradable gold position to do that." But Casey argues that this volatile and confusing time for gold is really a tiny blip on its long term trajectory. "Debt is still crushing most of the developed world .... [and] real interest rates are still negative," that is the interest rate minus the inflation rate.
