Gold Prices Holding Gains, Ignoring 7% Drop In Housing Starts
(Kitco News)- The gold market is seeing little reaction to weaker thanexpected housing construction data.
Friday, the Commerce Department said housing starts dropped 7% in Februaryto a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.236 million units. Economists wereexpecting new home construction to be mostly weaker falling to a rate of 1.29million units.
For the year, new home construction is up 2.9% from February 2017.
Atthe same time, building permits - important as an indicator of futureconstruction activity - last month fell 5.7% to 1.298 million lastmonth. Economists were expecting to see a modest decline to 1.32 millionpermits. Annually the issuance of building permist are down 0.6% from February last year.
Goldwas modestly positive ahead of the report, seeing a boost in safe-haven demandbecause of rising geopolitical concerns. The market is holding on to most ofits gains with April gold futures last trading at $1,320.40 an ounce, up 0.20%on the day.
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