Gold soars to new high as safe-haven on Iran

Gold soars to new high as safe-haven on Iran - Yahoo! News: "Gold soars to new high as safe-haven on Iran By Zach Howard and Martin Hayes
Fri Apr 28, 3:31 PM ET


NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Gold jumped to a 25-year high on Friday, closing up almost 3 percent in New York, on worries about record oil prices, a declining dollar and international confrontation over Iran's nuclear program.
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Near record prices for oil and base metals, along with a sharp fall in the dollar's exchange rate against the euro, fueled aggressive investor buying across the precious metals group, hoisting gold above its last high from a week ago.
Silver, which has been a shooting star in the booming commodity sector in recent weeks, but has been very volatile, jumped more than 8 percent. Yet it still played second fiddle to gold, which got an extra boost as a traditional safe-haven on the tense standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
'I think gold has kind of taken on a leadership role,' Steve Platt, a broker with Archer Financials in Chicago, said, adding that the yellow metal also was benefiting from a weak dollar.
'People for a long time had not been interested in the precious metals to any big degree, but now you have started to see them look at them once again as a flight to quality in terms of asset diversification,' Platt said."