Gold and silver shares rallied Wednesday as the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index (XAU) climbed 1.87 points to 206.30 in late morning trading.
A broad-based rally in precious metals spurred gold and silver shares higher, with the yellow metal jumping $17.44, or 1.2%, to $1,533.31 and silver adding $0.65, or 1.8%, to $36.11 per ounce.
Precious metals advanced in spite of a 0.4% rise in the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), which was boosted by weakness in the euro currency stemming from Moody’s downgrade of Portugal’s credit rating.
Notable advancers among gold and silver shares included XAU components Gold Fields (GFI), Royal Gold (RGLD), and Silver Wheaton (SLW). In morning trading, GFI, RGLD, and SLW climbed 2.6%, 1.8%, and 3.2%, respectively.
With today’s 1.0% rise in the XAU, the gold and silver equity composite reached its highest level in five weeks, since June 2. Furthermore, coupled with yesterday’s 2.5% rally, the XAU is now higher by 3.4% this week.
Despite this week’s strength, however, the XAU remains lower by 8.9% year-to-date. This compares quite unfavorably to the 7.9% and 16.7% gains for gold and silver, respectively, thus far in 2011.
Sunridge Gold Launches New Exploration Phase at Asmara
- The property remains only partially explored and has several highly prospective exploration targets with the potential for the discovery of additional deposits.
- There are structurally controlled gold and remobilized copper/gold targets on the Asmara Project which Sunridge also intends to explore.
- Sunridge has recently begun mapping, sampling and other field work on many of the targets in anticipation of a 10,000 meters exploration drilling program scheduled to commence in August 2011.
