Gold Rallies, Euro Stocks Slip as Russia Hammers Ukraine
Friday, 7/04/2025 15:38
The PRICE of GOLD traded in a tight range today, holding onto a $60 per ounce rally from last Friday's finish while European stock markets fell amid Russia's heaviest yet aerial attack on Ukraine's capital Kyiv.
"I didn't make any progress with him today at all," said US President Trump of Thursday's phonecall with Russia's President Putin.
"We can confirm Russia is intensifying its use of chemical weapons," said Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans today, presenting intelligence also gathered by Germany − and initially reported by the US last year − while calling for tougher
sanctions against Moscow.
Gold priced in the Dollar traded above $3330 per Troy ounce as US markets stayed shut for the 4th of July holiday, recovering two-thirds of last week's 2.9% plunge.
Euro gold prices rallied more weakly, recovering only 1/3rd of last week's 4.6% plunge to 12-week lows beneath €2790 per Troy ounce.
The EuroStoxx 600 index of the region's major equities meantime lost 0.5% for the week, with Germany's Dax trading 2.0% below the all-time record hit this time last month.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov today sent "sincere congratulations to the American people" on Independence Day.
With Trump's signature
'One Big Beautiful Bill' of tax relief and welfare cuts now approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the White House last night imposed fresh sanctions on Iran, targeting its "shadow fleet" of oil tankers after targeting "shadow bankers" amid last month's
"12-day war" between Iran and Israel.
Today
the UK gold price in Pounds per ounce also held onto its rally from last Friday, regaining half of last week's 4.6% plunge − the worst weekly drop since Pfizer announced successful trials of its Covid vaccine in the November of 2020's global pandemic.
Crude oil meanwhile trimmed its rebound from last week's 13.3% slump as the Opec cartel of producer nations discusses raising output, trading at $68 per barrel of global benchmark Brent.
That was the lowest price of oil since December 2021 when hit by
Trump's 'Liberation Day' trade tariffs announcement at the start of this April.
In contrast to energy and gold, the price of copper meanwhile fell this week, dropping back towards $5 per pound after jumping by 3.9% in the last week of June to end the first half of 2025 as
the year's best-performing major asset class to date, overtaking gold.
Despite forecasts that copper's use in electrical wiring will see demand leap over the next decade amid the 'green energy transition', massive over-capacity in refining in China is forcing processing plants around the world to suspend or shut operations as
smelting fees drop to zero and even turn negative.
Overall, "China's share of US imports [of goods] fell to just 7% in May," says Bloomberg News, "the lowest since 2001 and part of a longer trend that started with Trump's first-term trade war in 2018, when China's share was 21%."
"[But] China has
used transshipments very aggressively to circumvent the 50 percent US tariff rate it now bears," counters Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former FX strategist at US investment bank Goldman Sachs.
That's why this week's US trade deal with Vietnam puts a 20% tariff on the south-east Asian manufacturer but applies a "punitive" 40% where the goods originally come from elsewhere.
With the Chinese Yuan rising towards an 8-month high against the Dollar, the gold price in Shanghai today cut its rebound for the week to just 0.5% at a little below ¥773 per gram.
That still offered would-be importers a solid premium over London prices, rising to $11 per ounce.
Gold prices in No.2 consumer nation India continue to trade at a discount once import duty and sales tax are included, but that fell from $18 per ounce to $14 this week as lower imports offset a little of start-July's seasonally weak demand according to Mumbai dealers quoted by Reuters.
Dollar silver prices in London briefly came within 5 cents of $37 per Troy ounce before dropping back to show a 2.4% rise for the week at $36.86.
Platinum meantime traded at $1390 per Troy ounce, its highest week-end price since late-2014, but $45 below Wednesday's touch of the $1435 reached on Thursday last week.
"Cooling Chinese demand and declining Shanghai trading volumes suggest market enthusiasm has begun to wane after recent gains," says a note on
platinum prices from Chinese banking giant and London bullion clearer ICBC.
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