By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com - Gold plunged 5% for its biggest meltdown in a day since August after Pfizer’s announcement of progress in its Covid-19 vaccine program surprised markets, redirecting money from havens into risk assets.
New York-traded gold for December delivery settled down the day down $97.30, or 5%, at $1,854.40 per ounce. It fell more than $103 per ounce at the height of the sell-off that took it to a near four-month low of $1,848.30. It was the worst one-day liquidation in gold since early August.
Spot gold, which reflects real-time trades in bullion, was down $85.40, or 4.4%, to $1,865.81 by 3:55 PM ET (20:55 GMT)
“Gold is getting whacked in the wake of the vaccine news,” said Craig Erlam, analyst at OANDA in New York. “U.S. rates are rising on the back of the announcement and that’s bad news for the yellow metal.”
Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) announced on Monday that a Covid-19 vaccine candidate it developed jointly with BioNTech SE (NASDAQ:BNTX) proved more than 90% effective in the latest trials. It also said it expected to produce up to 50 million doses of its vaccine in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion in 2021.
Stock futures on Wall Street and oil prices were already trending higher before the Pfizer announcement, which came about two hours before the official start of the New York session.
The twist was in gold, which initially rallied before sinking as much as the Dow gained, as the dollar took off in a counter-play to the precious metal.