“I love the fact that gold is finally breaking down because that will offer an excellent buying opportunity,” Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, said on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart” on April 12. “The bull market in gold is not completed.”
Silver futures for May delivery plunged 12 percent to $23.15 an ounce in New York. Earlier, it dropped to $22.92, the lowest since Oct. 22, 2010.
Prices entered a bear market at the beginning of this month. Industrial products from solar panels to batteries account for about 53 percent of demand, according to the Washington-based Silver Institute.
Palladium, Platinum
China’s gross domestic product rose 7.7 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said today. That compares with the 8 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 41 analysts and 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, palladium futures for June delivery slumped 6.3 percent to $664.35 an ounce. Platinum futures for July delivery retreated 4.9 percent to $1,422.60 an ounce, after falling to $1,419, the lowest since Aug. 16.
The S&P GSCI Spot Index of 24 raw materials lost as much as 2.6 percent to 606.7, the lowest since July 12.