Gold and Silver Snips

Gold and silver futures are sharply higher early Tuesday in response to another bout of weakness in the U.S. dollar, analysts said.

Around 8:48 a.m. Eastern, December gold was up $14.20 to $1,019.10 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. December silver was up 42.5 cents to $17.305.

Bloomberg News

"It's the dollar failing more than anything else," said Charles Nedoss, senior account manager and metals analyst with Peak Trading Group.

He pointed out that the December dollar index has fallen below the low hit last week, bottoming so far at 76.22. The euro has hit a one-year high of $1.4825, up from $1.4676 late Monday in New York.

"This pretty much negates any bottoming activity that we thought we were seeing, at least near term," said Sterling Smith, commodity trading adviser and market analyst with Country Hedging. "That has gold excited and is pushing a general run in commodities this morning."

The market will be watching to see if anything emerges from a Group of 20 meeting later in the week to prop up the dollar, Mr. Smith said.

Meanwhile, October platinum rose $14.80 to $1,337 an ounce, while December palladium gained $5.80 to $304.95 an ounce.