Gold Breaks $2,000, Picking Historic High

Gold continues to break over the $2,000 barrier, and a new high-water mark is now within sight.

Gold kept going up and reached its highest level in 13 months after US data showed that the job market was getting worse than expected. This made it less likely that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates again.

The ADP Research Institute said Wednesday that the US added 145,000 jobs in March, which was a lot less than what most economists expected. The report comes before Friday's big employment report, which, if it's bad, could send the price of gold to a record high.

On Tuesday, the price of an ounce of gold closed above $2,000 for the first time since March 2022. This happened after data showed that the number of jobs open in the US in February was the lowest since May 2021. It's a good sign for the Fed, which has been trying to slow inflation by making the job market less hot.

The metal is getting close to its all-time high of $2,075.47, which was reached in August 2020. This is due to a significant price increase last month brought on by issues in the US and Swiss banking sectors. Indicators of a slowing economy have made people less likely to expect more Fed tightening, which tends to hurt the value of assets that don't pay interest.

Officials at the central bank have kept pushing back against the idea of cutting interest rates later this year. They say that more needs to be done to bring down inflation. In a speech on Tuesday, Loretta Mester, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, called for rates to go up again in 2023 and stay there for a while.

Carsten Menke, an analyst at Julius Baer Group Ltd., said, "The mood on the gold market has gotten a lot better since the turmoil in US banks a couple of weeks ago." "We still think that there won't be a recession in the US and that there won't be a quick change in US monetary policy."

As of 1:31 p.m. in London, the spot price of gold was $2,030.34 an ounce, up 0.5% from the previous session's close, which was up 1.8%. The change in the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was small. After going up 4.3% on Tuesday, silver went down a little bit, while platinum stayed the same and palladium went up.