Alina Piciorea, Piraeus: The price of gold is still being supported by demand for ingots and coins

Alina Piciorea, the head of the Corporate and Retail Sales Department and of the Treasury and Financial Markets Department of Piraeus Bank, said that the price of gold is still supported by the demand for gold bars and coins, by the purchases made by central banks, by the underperformance of other classes of assets and by the uncertainty surrounding the success of the solutions to the Eurozone crisis. On the other hand, she sees the expected strengthening of the dollar as a threat to the price of gold, which would put downward pressure on its price. Alina Piciorea went on to say: "From a technical point of view, the level of 1,680 dollars/ounce is a very important one, which, once broken, could cause the price to slide down to 1,600 dollars/ounce. Taking all of these factors into account, we expect gold to continue its consolidation around the level of 1,750 dollars/ounce, followed by a more important correction in the first half of 2012. The volatility of gold in the month of September and the correlation with the other assets have raised doubts over its safe-haven nature, and it will regain this status in the near future, due to its decoupling from the currency and capital markets and the rise towards 1,700 dollars and ounce". When asked whether gold could enter a speculative bubble in the near future, Alina Piciorea said: "As long as the answer to the question «Do you own gold?» addressed to people around us remains «No» in most cases, I think that gold is far from being in a speculative bubble".