By Jonathan Barratt

Dashed hopes of tapering for the time being and even further stimulus efforts have spurred a more positive outlook for gold. The move to three-week highs certainly helps endorse our positive sentiment for the metal. The weak jobs data out of the US has prompted talk that the Fed's US$85 billion a month spend will continue for the foreseeable future, prompting traders to put back on "stimulus trades", lower USD and higher gold. In addition to this, the metal has held up well in respect to continual liquidations in the ETF [exchange-traded fund] market. Last Monday saw the largest decline in tonnage from the largest of the EFTs, the SPDR, which saw a drop of 10.51 tones. This brings the total amount of gold controlled by the SPDR ETF market to 871.72 tones.