Daily Gold Update

Source: Wall Street Journal

London— Platinum and palladium led precious-metals prices to multimonth highs Monday, boosted by investment demand and the expectation that industrial consumption will improve this year. Traders said gold was up due to the rise in the platinum group metals, or PGMs, and despite a mildly stronger-to-steady U.S. dollar. U.S. markets are shut Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Analysts widely believe that the two industrial precious metals will have a better year than gold due to market expectations that industrial demand will start to improve and that there will be fresh demand via new exchange-traded funds launched this month.

Monday afternoon, spot platinum was trading at $1,615 a troy ounce, compared with $1,600 on Friday. The metal had hit $1,626 an ounce earlier in the day, the highest since August 2008. Spot gold was bid at $1134.50, from $1,132.60 on Friday. "Gold, on the one hand, is profiting from the support the PGM rally is lending to the entire precious metals complex," said Carl Johansson, precious-metals analyst with Goldessential.com. See full story.