Equities Gain ; The metal fell 23 percent to $1,291.27 an ounce in London this year

Equities Gain ; The metal fell 23 percent to $1,291.27 an ounce in London this year. It rose 9.4 percent since falling to $1,180.50 on June 28, reaching $1,300.88 on July 17. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of 24 commodities added 0.8 percent since the start of January and the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities gained 9.7 percent. Treasuries lost 2.6 percent, a Bank of America Corp. index shows. 

Gold reached a record $1,921.15 in September 2011 as the U.S. central bank, which is buying $85 billion of bonds a month, led nations in cutting interest rates and purchasing debt. The Fed could keep buying bonds for longer if “financial conditions -- which have tightened recently -- were judged to be insufficiently accommodative to allow us to attain our mandated objectives,” Bernanke said two days ago.