UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 24, 2016. Gold is expected to fluctuate within the $1,240-1,263/$1,200-$1,220 per troy ounce range in the nearest future, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s press service refers t o the bank’s Precious Metals Operations Director Evgeniy Afanasiev as saying.

‘Gold prices have gone up by 17.5% since the start of the year, reaching a peak of $1,246.4 per troy ounce on February 11. The demand was reinforced by investors’ mistrust of the central banks’ policies and panic on the global financial markets. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan, for instance, switched to negative rates, while the U.S. Federal Reserve System’s representatives made it clear that their rate would be rising more slowly than had been expected in late 2015,’ he said.

Afanasiev feels that these factors, combined with reports on China’s dropping GDP (up by only 6.9% last year, the twenty-five-year low) and persistently low oil prices (and re-evaluation of energy companies’ shares) caused panic on financial markets and made investors head for more secure assets, including gold. However, there is no short-term growth potential for gold any longer, also because of the market’s uncertainty as to what the central banks and the FRS will be doing in the near future.