Azerbaijan, Baku, April 25 / Trend /
Gold climbed to records and oil rose for a fourth day, while the dollar weakened, amid concern inflation will accelerate. U.S. stock futures advanced before a report forecast to show purchases of new homes increased from an all-time low, Bloomberg reported.
Gold climbed for a ninth day, while oil rose 0.5 percent in New York. Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures rose 0.2 percent and futures on Canada's S&P/TSX 60 Index advanced 0.4 percent after Barrick Gold Corp. agreed to buy Equinox Minerals Ltd. for C$7.3 billion ($7.68 billion) in cash. The U.S. dollar weakened versus 10 of 16 major peers. Asian shares fell.
The dollar's retreat came as investors looked ahead to the Federal Reserve's statement on interest rates and the economic outlook in two days. The homes sales data may bolster speculation the Fed will announce plans to complete the purchase of $600 billion of Treasuries by June. Other data this week may show Japan's retail sales sank and U.S. economic growth slowed, leading the nation's central banks to keep interest rates near zero, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
"Japan and the U.S. are the countries that can't steer toward monetary tightening, so the yen and dollar will be weak," said Daisaku Ueno, president of Gaitame.com Research Institute Ltd. in Tokyo, a unit of Japan's largest currency margin company.
The Federal Open Market Committee will hold the benchmark rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent on April 27, according to all 80 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. GDP rose at a 1.9 percent annual pace after increasing at a 3.1 percent rate in the previous three months, according to the median estimate of 66 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before an April 28 Commerce Department report.
New-home sales, tabulated when contracts are signed, climbed 12 percent to a 280,000 annual pace last month, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 64 economists. Purchases slumped 17 percent in February to a 250,000 rate, the weakest in data going back to 1963.