Capital Gold Group – Current Economic News

Bloomberg.com
By Angeline Benoit
May 15, 2013

The euro-area economy shrank more than economists forecast in the three months through March, extending a recession to a record sixth quarter and increasing pressure on the currency bloc’s leaders to spur growth.

Gross domestic product in the 17-nation euro zone fell 0.2 percent after a 0.6 percent decline in the previous quarter, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. The median of 39 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 0.1 percent contraction. From a year earlier, the economy shrank 1 percent.

The slowdown has spread to the euro core. The German economy, Europe’s largest, expanded less than forecast in the first quarter. France slipped into a recession and Italy’s contraction exceeded estimates. The European Central Bankcut its benchmark interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent this month and President Mario Draghi said the ECB is ready to act again if needed.

The first-quarter contraction “reinforces pressure on the ECB to come up with further measures to try and support euro-zone growth,” said Howard Archer, an economist at IHS Global Insight in London. “An interest rate cut to 0.25 percent looks ever more possible, while the ECB will also continue to look into the case for a negative deposit rate and ways of getting more credit through to smaller companies.”

‘In Sight’

The euro extended losses after the data were released and was trading at $1.2862 at 1:15 p.m. in Brussels, down 0.5 percent on the day. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index was up 0.5 percent to 307.24.

The euro area’s economic gloom contrasted with the U.K., where Bank of England GovernorMervyn King declared that a recovery is now “in sight” as he presented his final forecasts with an improved outlook for U.K. growth.

“Of most significance today is that there is a welcome change in the economic outlook,” King said in London. “This hasn’t been a typical recession, and it won’t be a typical recovery.”

In the central bank’s quarterly Inflation Report, officials predicted that growth may accelerate to 0.5 percent this quarter from 0.3 percent in the first three months of the year. The central bank sees inflation peaking at 3.1 percent in the third quarter of this year, lower than expected in February.

In Australia, Treasurer Wayne Swan made clear he’ll eschew European-style austerity as a stronger currency slows growth.

‘Social Destruction’

“To those who would take us down the European road of savage austerity I say the social destruction that comes from cutting too much, too hard, too fast is not the Australian way,” Swan told parliament in Canberra yesterday. “The alternative, cutting to the bone, puts Australian jobs and our economy at risk.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said European policy makers are still falling short in efforts to revive their economy, intensifying pressure on them to further ease their budget-cutting. “Europe is going to need to do a little bit better,” Lew said last week. “There’s room for progress.”

The ECB forecasts that the euro economy will shrink 0.5 percent this year. That compares with the European Commission’s projection of a 0.4 percent contraction.

Still, the euro area is forecast to pull out of its recession as the economy stagnates in the second quarter and returns to growth in the third, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

‘Subdued Recovery’

Sovereign borrowing costs have dropped across the bloc this year. The yield on Spain’s 10-year debt was at 4.35 percent at 12:11 p.m. in Brussels, compared with a euro era high of 7.75 percent in July, a day before Draghi pledged to do whatever was necessary to hold the single currency together. The yields for similar maturities were at 1.39 percent for Germany, 1.95 percent for France and 4.01 percent for Italy.

“A subdued recovery in the second half of the year is still possible, but that requires an improvement in confidence,” said Peter Vanden Houte, an economist at ING Bank NV in Brussels. “Therefore it is imperative that euro-zone leaders maintain the momentum in the strengthening of the monetary union, with the banking union as a first important hurdle to be taken.”

Eurostat data showed the German economy expanded 0.1 percent in the first quarter, while France contracted 0.2 percent and Italian output dropped 0.5 percent. The 27-nation EU economy shrank 0.1 percent in the quarter.

Record Unemployment

Euro-area unemployment has reached a record 12.1 percent as governments increase taxes and cut spending to contain public deficits. Alstom SA (ALO), the world’s third-largest power-equipment maker, last week cut its profitability forecast amid lower demand from local utilities in Europe.

“I think when Europe stabilizes, we’ll emerge in a really positive way,” said Richard Cousins, chief executive officer of Compass Group Plc (CPG), the world’s biggest catering company. “Our working assumption is to say Europe’s going to remain as it is for at least the next 18 months.”

Kitco News
By Kira Brecht
May 13, 2013

The U.S. Congress is no closer to a comprehensive deficit reduction agreement now than it was two years ago when the 2011 debt ceiling crisis hit, which resulted in a historic downgrade of U.S. credit by rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

Looking back at 2011, the political standoff and bickering triggered a swoon in the U.S. stock market and was a factor supporting gold prices to rally to all-time highs. Will the U.S. Congress usher in a repeat performance this summer?

The U.S. Treasury Department defines the debt limit here: “The debt limit is the total amount of money that the U.S. government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments. The debt limit does not authorize new spending commitments. It simply allows the government to finance existing legal obligations that Congresses and presidents of both parties have made in the past.”

Additionally, according to the U.S. Treasury, “since 1960, Congress has acted 78 separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit – 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.”

The debt ceiling limit, however, has become a politicized and polarizing issue surrounding the philosophical roles of government and the appropriate level of government spending as the U.S. national debt has topped $16 trillion.

While U.S. stocks continue their unrelenting rally to new all-time highs in most major indexes, stock analysts warn the market is vulnerable to a correction at any time. Stocks are rallying in large part due to the unrelenting support of the U.S. Federal Reserve and continued quantitative easing with $85 billion in new money pumped into the financial system each month. As the saying goes, “Don’t Fight the Fed.” Equity investors feel like the central bank has got their back.

But, for now, the economic numbers in the real economy remain sluggish and challenged. Despite the Fed’s extraordinary efforts, the real economy has yet to show significant signs of strong growth and substantial improvement in the labor market. The U.S. stock market is vulnerable to a correction or even a new bear market. Another debt ceiling crisis in 2013 could be a trigger for that.

Let’s look at the numbers from the period surround the 2011 U.S. debt ceiling crisis. From the May 2011 high to the October 2011 low, the S&P 500 fell just over 21%. Meanwhile, from May 2011 to the September 2011 high, nearby gold futures gained over 29%.

Congress voted in January 2013 to extend the current debt limit until May 19. But, accounting logistics allow the government to run perhaps until September or October before it actually runs out of money to pay its bills. Watch for this to be an important topic in the weeks ahead.

While there is no guarantee that history repeats itself, it appears the central players have not changed their lines. Until some flexibility and compromise and real deficit reduction work begins in the U.S. Congress, the stock market is vulnerable to another shock, correction or bear, which in turn would most likely support the gold trade if another debt ceiling debacle unfolds.

Huffington Post
By Mark Gongloff
May 7, 2013

If it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now: Employers just aren’t hiring.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday released its latest Job Openings And Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS), a less-famous read on the job market than Friday’s jobs report. The data are a month older than the jobs report, for one thing, and don’t include big, important numbers like the unemployment rate. But they still offer a helpful snapshot of the job market, tracking the millions of people who quit, get hired or get fired every month. Unfortunately, that snapshot is not too pretty.

On the upside, there were 3.8 million job openings in the U.S. in March, according to the data. On the downside, that is exactly the same number of job openings available a year ago, and below the 4.7 million openings in March 2007. And there are nearly 12 million unemployed people looking to fill those jobs.

In another ominous sign, people quit their jobs at a slower rate in March than in February. And about 4.3 million people were hired in March, down from 4.45 million in February and 4.4 million in March 2012. Back in March 2007, 5.35 million people got hired. In other words, hiring is going nowhere fast.

New hires made up just 3.2 percent of the total number of employed people in March, down from 3.3 percent a month earlier and matching the same percentage hired in March 2011. And 2010. In the chart above, you can clearly see the stagnation in hiring that has persisted since the Great Recession ended (recessions are marked by gray bands).

I recently noted that the level of new weekly claims for unemployment benefits has fallen nearly back to pre-recession levels, but unemployment is nowhere close to getting back to normal. The current level of claims is typically associated with a level of unemployment about 4 million workers lower than it currently is, or an unemployment rate of about 5 percent, instead of 7.5 percent.

That suggests that employers aren’t firing people any more. But, they’re not hiring people, either, according to Tuesday’s JOLTS data.

“There are no positive trends here for the job picture,” independent economist Robert Brusca wrote in a note.

What accounts for the reluctance to hire? Simply, employers still see demand as too weak to justify ramping up hiring. This actually isn’t all that surprising in the aftermath of a financial crisis and recession created by a housing bubble. Consumers have been too busy picking through the wreckage of their finances to spend a lot of money. And the government sector is not helping by slashing its own payrolls in a self-destructive frenzy of austerity, possibly robbing the economy of 2.2 million workers, according to a recent Brookings Institution study.

Kitco.com
By Kira Brecht
May 3, 2013

The gold market largely consolidated this week, with little new ground seen higher or lower. The market has been through a lot recently and consolidation or sideways action is a good thing. The dust is settling for now.

Looking out across the broad spectrum of global central bank policy—the extraordinary monetary policy accommodation by the so-called “big three” banks (Bank of Japan, U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank) remains firmly in place.

The U.S. Federal Reserve released a statement after its meeting this week and while the changes were minimal, they were indicative of a Fed willing to do more if needed. “At the conclusion of the (Tuesday-Wednesday) meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Committee made no change in key policy, but subtle changes in the statement packed a punch,” wrote Nomura analysts in a client research note.

Nomura analysts zoomed in on three important takeaways: “language around the impact of fiscal drag was more decisive,” they wrote. Some economists estimate the impact to U.S. GDP growth from the sequester will lop 1.5 percentage points off growth this year. For an economy growing at around 2.0% that is a big deal.

Another key factor that Nomura highlighted is the “prospects for additional accommodation- The most significant change to the statement came in the explicit promise that, ‘The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes.’ This sentence has been added since the March statement. ”

Finally, in the wake of the fresh news that U.S. inflation has softened further, the Fed took note in its latest policy note. Headline consumer prices fell 0.1% in March, while the core PCE deflator was unchanged. But, on a year-over-year basis, core consumer prices have gained only 1.1%, which is below the Fed’s 1.5-2.0% inflation target. While on the surface a lack of inflation may sound good, what is really represents and reveals is sluggish growth and demand, which leaves companies with the inability to raise prices.

Nomura analysts highlighted in a research note the Fed’s new focus on inflation. “The Committee chose to increase the emphasis on inflation as a determinate of the pace of asset purchases,” Nomura analysts wrote.

Bottom line? Many central bank watchers believe the Fed will continue its current pace of asset purchases throughout year-end.

On the European Central Bank front this past week, the 25 basis-point cut was largely expected by the markets. But, President Draghi kept the door open for additional monetary policy rate cuts if needed, even the possibility of negative rates for its deposit facility.

Meanwhile, the third of the “big three” —the Bank of Japan has embarked firmly on its extraordinary monetary policy accommodation and more could lie ahead.

What does this all mean? The policy of printing money, quantitative easing and extraordinary monetary policy accommodation remains in place at the U.S. Fed, the ECB and the BOJ, with for now—no signs of letting up in the foreseeable future.

While gold prices have, for now, stopped reacting to the on-going global monetary policy accommodation, it remains a solid trend in place. These easy-money policies are not going to change any time soon as the world’s developed economies continue to battle slow growth and recession.

Meanwhile, the emerging nations continue to show much brighter prospects of stronger growth ahead. Physical buying emerged on the massive price drop seen in gold in recent weeks. During the month of April, sales of gold coins by the U.S. Mint surged to 209,500 ounces, up from 62,000 ounces in March.

Physical buyers came out of the woodwork on the price decline. If additional softness is seen in gold prices, additional physical demand can be expected. Emerging market nation’s demand is only expected to rise in the years ahead. And, with the bulk of the world’s GDP coming from those emerging nations it might be important to pay attention to their voracious and growing appetite for gold.

Yahoo! Finance
By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
May 1, 2013

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve’s debate over monetary policy could begin to shift away from the prospect of reducing stimulus toward a discussion about doing more, given the signs of economic weakness and slowing inflation.

But officials are not there yet, and that wariness has been sensed by financial markets, where the dollar has retreated in recent days and bond yields have declined in anticipation that the central bank will keep the policy pedal to the metal.

At a two-day meeting that wraps up on Wednesday, the Fed is widely expected to maintain its monthly purchases of $85 billion in bonds to support an economic recovery that is nearly four years old but still too weak for the job market to truly heal.

With the central bank’s favored inflation gauge slipping and employment growth faltering, policymakers could again find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to shift from talk of curbing stimulus to the possibility of doing more.

Currently, analysts see the Fed buying a total $1 trillion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities during the ongoing third round of quantitative easing, known as QE3. Until recently, analysts had believed the Fed would start taking the foot off the accelerator in the second half of the year.

Now, things are looking a bit more shaky.

“Expectations for tapering off of the Fed’s outcome-based purchases have been pushed back due to recent softening in the economic data,” according to a report from the private sector Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, released on Wednesday.

The housing market continues to show signs of strength, with home prices posting their biggest yearly gain since 2006, the year the market began a historic slide that snowballed into a global financial crisis.

However, the industrial sector is not quite as perky. Durable goods orders posted their largest drop in seven months in March, while an index of Midwest manufacturing showed an unexpected contraction in the sector for April.

That trend was reinforced by a key report from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) on Wednesday.

Its index for national factory activity fell to 50.7 in April from 51.3 the month before, coming in under expectations for a 50.9 print.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion. The report provides an early indications of the economy’s current state of health.

In an ill omen for the April U.S. jobs report, due on Friday, the ISM employment index fell to 50.2 from 54.2. Earlier, the monthly ADP National Employment Report showed that U.S. private employers added 119,00 jobs in April, well under expectations for a gain of 150,000 jobs.

Economic growth did rebound in the first quarter after a dismal end to 2012, but the 2.5 percent annual rate of expansion fell short of economists’ estimates, and economists are already penciling in a weaker second quarter.

At the same time, inflation has steadily been coming down. The Fed’s preferred measure of core inflation, which excludes more volatile food and energy costs, rose just 1.1 percent in the year to March. Overall inflation was up just 1 percent, the smallest gain in 3-1/2 years.

The Fed targets inflation of 2 percent.

CHECKING THE TOOLKIT

Despite the economy’s softer tone, a wait-and-see attitude seems the most likely approach for now. The Fed is expected to nod to the economy’s disappointing performance when it announces its decision at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT), even as it maintains its course.

But if the economy’s fortunes do not improve, the U.S. central bank may well look for fresh ways to boost its support to the economy — increasing the amount of assets it is buying is just one option.

The Fed could announce an intent to hold the bonds it has bought until maturity instead of selling them when the time comes to tighten monetary policy. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has already raised this as a possibility.

Central bankers could also set a lower unemployment threshold to signal when the time might be ripe to finally raise overnight interest rates, which they have held near zero since December 2008. Currently, the threshold stands at 6.5 percent, provided inflation does not threaten to breach 2.5 percent.

Research suggests such “forward guidance” about the future path of interest rates can have a strong impact on current borrowing costs, and one Fed official — Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank — has already suggested lowering the threshold to give the economy a boost.

“Forward guidance would be perceived as having lower costs (than bond purchases) by most, I think, and for that reason I think it could be the preferred avenue, especially if more stimulus was projected to be needed for a long period of time,” said Roberto Perli, a partner at Cornerstone Macro in Washington and a former Fed economist.

Analysts generally agree that is a debate for the future, if the Fed even gets there at all.

Victor Li, a former regional Fed economist who teaches at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, said employment growth would have to be consistently below the 100,000 jobs per month pace in combination with core inflation of around 1 percent for the Fed to consider a greater easing of monetary policy.

“There is just no evidence that this is going to happen.”

Others are less sanguine. Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan’s Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, said the risk that prices will drop persistently, causing further economic damage, cannot be ruled out.

“What’s more relevant than the current inflation trend is what this means for forecast inflation,” Wolfers said. “And I think even more relevant than the Fed’s official point estimate for inflation is the probability that deflation looms as a real threat. Inflation rates lower than 1 percent certainly raise a greater risk of deflation.”

Bloomberg.com
By Debarati Roy
April 30, 2013

Sales of gold coins by the U.S. Mint rose to the highest since December 2009 after the price of the metal in April fell the most in 16 months.

Last month, sales totaled 209,500 ounces, up from 62,000 ounces in March, data on the mint’s website show. The amount for December 2009 was 231,500 ounces. Silver-coin sales rose to 4.2 million ounces from 3.36 million in March.

Demand surged at mints from Australia to the U.K. and the U.S. after futures slumped 13 percent in two days through April 15. Gold futures tumbled 7.8 percent last month and dropped into a bear market as some investors lost faith in the metal as a store of value. Perth Mint, which refines almost all of the nation’s bullion, said that demand jumped to the highest in five years after prices plunged, with the factory kept open through the weekend to meet orders.

“People are flocking to buy physical gold,” Todd Dutkevitch, a senior account executive at Los Angeles-based American Bullion Inc., said in a phone interview. “The price drop has made it possible for many retail buyers to add gold.”

Futures for June delivery rose 0.1 percent to $1,473.30 an ounce on the Comex in New York today. The metal is down 12 percent this year, even after advancing 11 percent from a 26- month low of $1,321.50 on April 16.

The U.S. mint said April 23 it suspended sales of coins weighing a 10th of an ounce after demand more than doubled from a year earlier.

Most Popular

The mint sells 22-karat American Eagles of 1 ounce at a 3 percent premium to London “p.m. fixing” prices. A half-ounce coin is set at 5 percent above, a quarter-ounce coin is 7 percent above, and one weighing a 10th of an ounce fetches a 9 percent premium, according to Michael White, a Mint spokesman.

“The 1-ounce gold bullion coins are the most popular,” White said last week.

In Australia, buyers were waiting in lines half a kilometer (0.3 mile) long to get minted coins, and jewelry shops in India and China ran out of gold in a single day, Jason Toussaint, the managing director of investments at the London-based World Gold Council, said in an interview. India and China are the world’s largest consumers of bullion.

Surging demand from Dubai to Istanbul has pushed physical premiums in the region to levels not seen in years as the biggest price slump in three decades lures consumers, according to MKS (Switzerland) SA.

Shanghai Trading

Trading for the benchmark contract on the Shanghai Gold Exchange surged to a record last week, while premiums to secure supplies in India jumped to five times the level before the slump. China and India are the world’s largest buyers.

Consumers in Singapore and Hong Kong are paying premiums of about $3 an ounce, compared with about $2 just after the rout, according to Ng Cheng Thye, the head of precious metals at Standard Merchant Bank (Asia) Ltd.

Still, holdings in exchange-traded products backed by the precious metal tumbled 174 metrictons in April, a record drop, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“This drop has made physical gold much more attractive than paper gold,” Dutkevitch said.

CNBC.com
By Jenny Cosgrave
April 25, 2013

Gold prices will top $10,000 per ounce, the stock market will tank and Treasurys will yield less than 1 percent, Societe Generale’s Albert Edwards forecast in a trademark bearish report on Thursday.

“My working experience of the last 30 years has convinced me that policymakers’ efforts to manage the economic cycle have actually made things far more volatile… The current round of quantitative easing will be no different,” said Edwards in a weekly strategy report.

“We have written previously, quoting Marc Faber, that ‘The Fed Will Destroy the World’ through their money printing. Rapid inflation surely beckons. But that will not occur without firstly a Japanese-style loss of confidence in policymakers as we dive back into recession and produce dislocative market moves.”

In the note, Edwards said central banks’ stimulus measures will drive the world towards global recession, soaring inflation and a “Japanese-style” loss of confidence in policymakers.

“We may have seen the peak of nominal U.S. GDP growth for this cycle. An unfolding recession should see 10-year bond yields dragged ever lower and the Fed moving to QE infinity (squared),” he said.

Edwards advised investors to take refuge in gold, and added that gold’s current fall-off was still in sync with his ultra-bullish outlook on the precious metal.

“Gold corrected 47 percent from 1974-1976, before rising more than eight times to $887 per ounce in 1980. A steep correction is normal before the parabolic move…Holding gold is a bet against central banks competency and given their track record that is certainly a bet I’d be happy to still take,” he said.

And for those who might think his outlook outlandish, Edwards had pithy advice.

“The late Margaret Thatcher had a strong view about consensus. She called it: ‘The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects.’ The same applies to most market forecasts,” said Edwards.

“In that vein, we repeat our key forecasts of the S&P Composite to bottom around 450, accompanied by sub-1 percent U.S. 10-year yields and gold above $10,000.”

Bull Market Thinking
By Tekoa Da Silva
April 24, 2013

As the headline battle between paper sellers and physical buyers of gold escalates, something eerily strange is continuing behind the scenes.

As first reported here on April 9th, Comex gold inventories have been plummeting, demonstrating the highest levels of physical removal ever during a single quarter in Q1, 2013.

Most shocking however, is that Comex warehouse inventories are accelerating their downward plunge, with dropping inventories now spreading to the world’s largest fund depositories.

Over the last four weeks alone, total reported inventories of ETFs, funds, and depositories collapsed by over 5.5 million ounces, or in dollar terms, by over $7,000,000,000 dollars.

The largest physical removals were reported by the Comex at about 1.4 million ounces, or nearly $2 billion dollars, and the GLD, which reported total inventory removal of nearly 4 million ounces, or roughly over $5.6 billion dollars.

Here is a chart illustrating the continued gold inventory plunge at Comex warehouses:

Individual reporting by the world’s largest funds and depositories show a spreading phenomenon, with Comex and GLD sticking out like sore thumbs…

-Why is there such a panic going on to remove physical gold from Comex registered warehouses and other depositories?

-Why did it begin before the collapse, and why does it now appear to be accelerating? 

-Why is the multi-trillion dollar fund management industry denouncing gold, while it quickly moves inventory out of registered warehouses?

-Where is the gold moving, and what is it telling us?

-Is this wholesale migration signaling an imminent geopolitical or major market event? 

——

Bottom Line: These are difficult questions to answer, however, one element of truth remains, which is that gold always tells the truth. If it gets up and moves from location to another, you can bet there’s a reason for it.

Furthermore, Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass is known for having stated that,“We went and looked at the Comex…[they had] $80B in open interest and $2.7B (3.3%) in deliverables at the time…[so] it’s actually an easy decision if you’re a fiduciary…you go get [your gold], and let them worry about the rest.”

Kitco News
By Neils Christensen
April 23, 2013

The U.S. Mint announced that it is temporarily suspending the sale of one-tenth ounce American Eagle Gold Bullion Coins. The coin will go back on sale once inventories have been replenished. The Mint said that 85,000 one-tenth ounce coins were sold in April, the second strongest month for sales this year behind January. “While the one-ounce gold bullion coins remain the most popular, demand for the one-tenth ounce coins has remained strong too, with year-to-date demand for these coins up over 118% compared to the same period last year,” the Mint says in a statement. Although the one-tenth ounce coins are not available, The Mint continues to offer American Eagle Gold Bullion Coins in three other options – the one-ounce, one-half ounce and one-quarter ounce sizes.

Bloomberg.com
By Debarati Roy
April 18, 2013

The U.S. Mint in April has sold 153,000 ounces of American Eagle gold coins, the highest in almost three years, after futures prices started the week by plunging the most since 1980.

Sales have more than doubled from March and surged sevenfold from a year earlier, data on the Mint’s website showed. The amount for all of May 2010 was 190,000 ounce.

This week, retail sales and jewelry demand soared in India, the world’s top gold buyer, and China, the second-biggest, after futures in New York slumped into a bear market, touching the lowest in more than two years. Coin sales also surged in Australia.

“Sales for coins have jumped this week,” Raymond Nessim, the chief executive officer of New York-based MTB Inc., a dealer authorized to purchase coins directly from the U.S. Mint, said in a telephone interview. “The price drop has definitely given a big push to sales.”

The China Gold Association said that retail sales soared on April 15 and April 16, and the All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation said that demand climbed to the highest this year. Sales surged from Australia’s Perth Mint, which refines almost all of the nation’s bullion, Treasurer Nigel Moffatt said. He didn’t provide precise figures.

On the Comex in New York, gold futures for June delivery rose 0.7 percent to settle at $1,392.50 an ounce today. On April 16, the metal touched $1,321.50, the lowest since January 2011. The price has tumbled 17 percent this year.

“The volume of business that we’re putting through is way in excess of double what we did last week,” Moffatt said in a telephone interview. “There have been people running through the gate.”