Priced in Dollars, gold bullion has now set a new London benchmark record on 27 days in 2024 so far.

 

With economic demand growth sinking in China alongside real-estate prices and the stock market over the past 2 years, "These measures will support the stable growth of China's economy and promote a moderate rebound in prices," said PBoC governor Pan Gongsheng at today's pre-arranged press conference in Beijing, cutting the Chinese central bank's key overnight interest rate from 1.7% to 1.5% per annum and reducing the amount of money that commercial lenders must keep in reserve, releasing around 1 trillion Yuan ($142bn) into the country's financial markets.

 

The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets jumped, raising the CSI300 index by 4.3% – its strongest 1-day jump since July 2020 – but still keeping it lower for 2024 to date.

 

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index also jumped by 4%, while luxury goods brands LVMH Moet Hennesy and Hermes both added around 3% in European trade, helping the EuroStoxx 600 index add 0.6%.

 

But with Shanghai gold prices hitting new all-time highs, bullion landed in China continued trading at its deepest discount to quotes in London since mid-summer 2021, deterring new imports and signalling weak demand versus supply.

 

 

"I think we're going to see increasing resistance up here," says global banking giant and London bullion clearing bank HSBC's chief precious metals analyst James Steel, commenting on the latest run of new record gold prices above $2600.

 

"Underlying physical demand is down because of high prices. Coin and [retail] bar demand is slowing as well.

 

"Such changes in physical demand will often take a very long time to push into prices [and] right now we have a lot of momentum and technical [chart-chasing] buying in the [derivatives] market...a lot of it predicated off expectations for more rate cuts."

 

Silver prices meantime added 20 cents per ounce Tuesday midday from yesterday's 12 noon benchmarking auction in London to fix around $30.85, but its spot-trading high was 5.0% below May's 2024 peak and more than 1/3rd below the all-time tops of January 1980 and April 2011.

 

Fellow "industrial" precious metals platinum and palladium similarly traded down for the week so far, trading respectively at $973 – more than 11.3% below May's 1-year high – and $1054, up some 23.5% from last month's 6-year low.

 

Crude oil also rallied from yesterday's drop, reaching $75 per barrel of European benchmark Brent – down $3 per barrel year-to-date – as China's stimulus news offset downgrades to 2024 global demand forecasts from both the Opec carel of producer nations and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

 

Israel meantime confirmed that it hit Lebanon's capital Beirut with an airstrike on Tuesday, one day after its bombardment of Hezbollah 

 

"It is not too late to go back to diplomacy," said a spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres today as Israel continued to follow last week's pager attacks on members of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon with the heaviest bombardment since the 2006 war.

 

"I think that we are closer to peace than we think," said Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky to ABC News overnight ahead of meeting US leader Joe Biden to discuss further military aid in fighting Russia's ongoing invasion.

 

"We just have to be very strong, very strong."