Daily Gold Update

Source: Reuters

Washington— Metals futures closed broadly higher Wednesday, with gold erasing some of the week's losses as the U.S. dollar came under renewed selling pressure.

Copper prices remained hot, extending their recent rally but finishing off their highs for the session.

Gold's gains came at the expense of the dollar, whose weakness reflected in part the latest reading of the U.S. current account deficit. The Commerce Department said the deficit widened to a record $187.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004. See Economic Report. See Currencies.

After losing $5.40 an ounce over Monday and Tuesday, gold for April delivery won back $2.80 to close at $444.20 lately an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Amid signs that strong global demand isn't abating, May copper advanced 1.55 cents to end at $1.506 a pound.

May silver closed at $7.452 an ounce, up 4.5 cents. April platinum built on early gains, rallying by $11 to finish at $887.80 an ounce, and June palladium gained $3.60 to close at $206.55 an ounce.

According to the latest inventories data compiled by Nymex, gold stood at nearly 5.917 million troy ounces as of the close of business Tuesday, up 2,812 troy ounces from the previous day. Silver increased by 204,683 troy ounces to reach nearly 101.7 million troy ounces, while copper inventories were down 225 short tons to stand at 45,395 short tons.

In equities, the indexes tracking mining stocks remained higher.

The Philadelphia Gold/Silver Index rose 0.9 percent to stand at 101.56 points, while the CBOE Gold Index added 1.3 percent to 89.70 and the Amex Gold Bugs Index was up 1 percent to 220.77.