Gold Price Reaches New Record High

Of course, the price of gold has been making new all-time highs in other currencies for months now, but, today it was the yellow metal’s turn against the U.S. dollar and this afternoon’s close at $1,232.50 an ounce eclipsed last December’s record of $1,227.50 an ounce for the near-month futures contract.

Safe haven buying in Europe and elsewhere was the proximate cause for the big surge and, now that the old high has been taken out, there is no technical resistance in the upward direction making for an interesting period ahead for gold investors.

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Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan equaled Goldman Sach’s stellar first quarter trading performance in not losing money on a single day, further confirmation that things are indeed back to normal on Wall Street (if not on main Street).

Daily trading revenue averaged $118 million on each of the 64 days in the first quarter, JPMorgan said in a regulatory filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

JPMorgan said it doesn’t expect the same trading revenue throughout the year. “The high level of trading and securities gains in the first quarter of 2010 is not likely to continue throughout 2010,” the firm said in the filing.

Goldman Sachs, which is contesting a fraud lawsuit from the SEC related to the sale of a mortgage-linked security in 2007, reported yesterday that net revenue was $25 million or higher on each of the days it traded. The New York-based firm said it made more than $100 million on 35 of those days, or more than half the time.

Morgan Stanley, the sixth-largest U.S. bank by assets, reported May 7 that it made more than $120 million in trading revenue on seven separate days in the first quarter, or 11 percent of the time. The firm’s trading division lost money on four days during the quarter, compared with 14 days a year earlier, according to its filing. New York-based Morgan Stanley made money in trading on 57 of the 61 trading days in the first quarter, or 93 percent of the time.

Of course, borrowing money from the central bank at virtually zero cost and then lending a good portion of that money back to the Treasury Department at a much higher interest rate probably had a lot to do with the consistency of both firms.

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Dr. Marc Faber of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report talks with Bloomberg’s Pimm Fox on a range of timely topics including the global economy, stocks, commodities, and the European bailout which he see’s as a move to save the banks, not Greece.


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As for his investment stance, it’s no surprise that he’s still quite bullish on precious metals, noting that they could go “to the sky” given all the money printing now being done by central banks. He’s much less sanguine about equity markets.

 
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