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Gold recovers after biggest 1-day drop since Feb

Gold firmed in Europe on Friday, the day after posting its biggest one-day decline since February 29, as lower prices tempted some cautious buyers back to the market and as crude oil recovered from 18-month lows.

The metal fell sharply on Thursday after the Federal Reserve disappointed investors by holding off on a new round of quantitative easing, or printing money to buy bonds, to boost growth in the United States.

Talk that more stimulus measures were on the way, which would maintain pressure on long-term interest rates, keeping the opportunity cost of holding gold at rock bottom and weighing on the dollar, had buoyed the metal earlier this month.

It has since erased the bulk of June’s gains and is on track for its biggest weekly loss since early March.

Spot gold was up 0.3 percent at $1,569.46 an ounce at 1229 GMT, while U.S. gold futures for August delivery were up $4.60 an ounce at $1,570.10. Its modest gains initially tracked a recovery in crude prices from 18-month lows on Friday.

A Reuters poll on Thursday showed Wall Street’s top bond firms still estimated a 50 percent chance that the Fed would begin a third round of quantitative easing.

Concerns over global growth remained high on Friday, as German business sentiment fell for a second straight month in June to its lowest level in over two years. German, French, Italian and Spanish leaders are meeting in Rome on Friday ahead if a key EU summit next week.

European shares extended the previous session’s losses as recent poor economic data raised fresh concerns about the pace of global recovery, while the dollar firmed against a basket of currencies, supported by safe-haven flows.

Good support

From a technical perspective, gold is seeing good support at $1,560, and below that at $1,530, analysts who study past price patterns for clues as to the future direction of trade said.

Demand for physical gold in key markets remained lacklustre, meanwhile. Gold imports to India, historically the world’s largest buyer, fell by $6.2 billion in the first two months of the fiscal year that began in April, compared with a year before, finance secretary R.S. Gujral said on Friday.

Gold buying in India has been hurt by weakness in the rupee, which pushed local prices to record highs, and the federal government’s decision to double import duty on gold to 4 percent. Gold imports have been widely blamed as one of the reasons for the country’s widening current account deficit.

The market remained underpinned by demand from central banks, meanwhile. Russian newswire Interfax reported a 15.6 tonne rise in Russia’s gold reserves in May.

Silver was flat at $26.85 an ounce. Prices fell 4.4 percent on Thursday and touched their lowest this year earlier on Friday at $26.60.

The gold/silver ratio, which measures the number of silver ounces needed to buy an ounce of gold, rose to its highest since October 2010 this morning, at 58.2.