© Mike Segar / Reuters Gold bullion



Gold futures moved sharply higher Monday as a grim outlook on the spread of coronavirus supported investor appetite for the haven metal, even as U.S. benchmark stock indexes climbed on hope that fatalities from the pandemic will soon reach a peak.

The U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Sunday said “this is going to be the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly.” He told “Fox News Sunday” that “this is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized.”

Still, some investors focused on more optimistic news, including signs that the spread of the virus was slowing in New York City and a fall in the number of deaths in Spain.

Overall, “this somewhat encouraging news appears to be a goldilocks scenario for gold, as buyers are more confident to step in and purchasing the safe-haven metal, while knowing there are still very tough times ahead, including the specter of problematic inflation farther down the road,” said Jim Wyckoff, senior analyst at Kitco.com.

June gold on Comex was trading $42.00, or 2.6%, higher at $1,687.40 an ounce. With a close at or above its current level, the precious metal would mark its highest settlement since January 2013, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Meanwhile, silver for May delivery was up 48.60 cents, or 3.4%, to reach $14.98 an ounce, following a 0.3% weekly decline put in on Friday.

“The gold price is ready to break past $1,700 as supplies get to hungry markets,” said Peter Spina, president and chief executive officer at GoldSeek.com.

“The demand for physical gold remains strong in the West and physical deliveries from Comex is driving up the price in U.S. dollar terms to new records,” he told MarketWatch. “The U.S. Dollar Index is above 100 and rising with the gold price. The key difference, the gold price is rising faster in terms of U.S. dollars.”

“The consequences of negative rates in a liquidity rich environment will continue to fuel the gold price higher as sellers are less eager to sell to the more hungry buyers,” Spina said. So the “march to $2,000 and beyond continues. Next stop is $1,700 now, with a move above kicking up the momentum buying-energy even more into a bullish state.”

Bullion’s gain on Monday comes even as stocks surged higher after tumbling on Friday, in the wake of data that showed job losses in March exceeded many economists’ worst-case-scenario. The U.S. lost 701,000 jobs in March, the government’s official employment scorecard showed.

“The bottom line is that the worst may not be over, and it seems premature to say that the bottom is in for stocks,” wrote Marios Hadjikyriacos, investment analyst at XM, in a daily research note. “Arguing in the same direction, gold is trading well higher today, indicating that many investors are still ‘playing defense’ even as stocks recover,” he wrote.

Optimistic equity investors have clung to hopes that the global outbreak of COVID-19, which was first identified in December in Wuhan, China and has infected more than 1.3 million people, is starting to show signs of stabilizing. The growth rate of new cases of the disease and fatalities slowed over the weekend. In the U.S., the new-case growth tally slowed to 8.2% from 12.3%, and the fatality rate slowed in both Italy and Spain, according to data compiled by Deutsche Bank.

For now, other metals on Comex followed gold higher Monday, with the exception of palladium, which saw its June contract fall by 2.2% to $2,060.50 an ounce.

May copper tacked on 0.8% to $2.2115 a pound and July platinum added 2% to $732.90 an ounce.