Gold Slumps Again Even on Surging Inflation, Foreclosures & Jobless Data

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold rose over $10 to $836.65 on Thursday and silver climbed more than 30 cents to $15.11 by late trade in Asia, but both metals then fell back off for most of the rest of trade and ended near their lows of $804.35 and $14.10 with losses of 2% and 3.92%.

The Gold Price in Euros fell to about €546, platinum lost $15 to $1491.50, and copper fell nearly 5 cents to about $3.32.

Oil fell as the US Dollar index rose again on Euro weakness as data showed the Eurozone economy shrank 0.2% in the second quarter, reinforcing the view that the ECB will not be raising its interest rates anytime soon.

US Treasury bonds rose on the hope that a weak economy will help curb inflation in the future, while the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P opened lower on an unexpectedly large jump in US inflation.

Consumer-price inflation for July came in ahead of expectations at 5.6% year-on-year, with Core CPI rising by 0.3% last month alone.

Initial jobless claims also came in higher than expected, while US banks repossessed almost three times as many US homes in July as a year earlier and the number of properties at risk of foreclosure jumped 55 percent according to RealtyTrac.

Existing US home sales fell to a 10-year low in the second quarter and the median price for a single-family house dropped 7.6% as the real estate slump deepened.

Stocks soon turned higher however and ended with decent gains on the view that the worst is behind the US while the rest of the world is still dealing with the harsh impacts of the credit crunch.

Gold and silver equities fell roughly 4% by early afternoon before they rebounded to trade only about 3% lower, but they then fell back off to new lows in the final hour and ended with over 4% losses.

Friday at 13:30 GMT brings the NY Empire State Index for August – expected at -5.0 – and then at 14:00 comes the Net Foreign Purchases of US Securities report for June, expected at $57.5 billion.

Then comes Capacity Utilization for July, with US Industrial Production – expected to be flat after Europe reported its first contraction since monetary union in 1999 on Thurs – to follow.