Gold Sets New Record on Safe-Haven Buying

Gold set a new record Monday as investors fled stocks, weakening currencies and U.S. Treasuries for the safety of gold and gold-related assets.

Gold for December delivery, the most actively traded contract on the CME Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, settled at $1,891.90 per ounce, up more than 2 percent from Friday's closing price of $1,852.20.

Investors are worried about continued weakness in the U.S. dollar and the euro, the continuing inability of European leaders to get a handle on the continent's sovereign debt crisis, chatter that the head of the U.S. central bank intends to re-enter the Treasury market in a third round of quantitative easing, and continued evidence that the U.S. economy may already be in recession.

Gold is driven by the expectation that at some point inflation will come back, and a continuation of people looking for a safe haven beside just the U.S. Treasury bonds, Leo Larkin, metals equity analyst at Standard & Poor's, told Reuters.

It's still susceptible to a pretty big pullback as things are overdone based on technical indicators.

For several hours during the day it appeared that gold might top $1,900 but the closest the yellow metal could come was a tantalizing $1,898.60.

Analysts who focus on technical indicators reckon that a correction is due.

People talk about gold as an insurance premium, but right now it's a really high insurance premium to pay, Bayram Dincer, an analyst at LGT Capital Management told Reuters.

Silver for September delivery closed up 2.1 percent at $43.33 per ounce.