Gold Ends Week Above $1,000 But Slips in Euros as Stock-Rally Falters

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold rose modestly in Asia and early London trading on Friday, holding tight either side of $1,000 an ounce before climbing to a fresh 18-month high of $1011.65 by 10:00am in New York.

The Gold Price fell back off into the close, but it still ended with a gain of 0.9% for the day, achieving its first-ever weekly close above $1,000 and adding more than 1.0% from the previous Friday.

Oil fell back below $70 per barrel on worries over the sustainability of the recent increase in energy demand.

The US Dollar index fell yet again, hitting a new low for the year on the continued move into higher-yielding assets, but the Gold Price in Euros still rose on the day, ending the week €5 lower per ounce at €690.

Treasuries rose slightly as the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P mostly fell on concern about a pullback or worse in the major indices, cutting their week-on-week rise to 2.5%.

Silver jumped as high as $16.967 in early New York dealing before it also fell back into the close, ending with a gain of 0.5% for the day and 2.9% higher for the week.

Platinum gained $34 to $1316, and copper fell a few cents to about $2.83.

Gold Mining and silver equities rose over 3% in the first half hour of trade, but they then fell back off to see only a little over 1% gains by late morning and remained at about that level for the rest of the day.

New US data showed Import Prices rising sharply in Aug. from July, increasing at 2.0%, twice the pace analysts forecast. Export Prices rose 0.7%.

Last month's Treasury Budget was less bad than expected, little different to July's with a deficit of $111.4 billion.

Wholesale Inventories declined in July by 1.4%, slower than June's 2.1% rate. The Michigan Sentiment Index showed a surprise jump above 70 against Wall Street forecasts of 67.5.

Next week's US economic highlights include Producer Price Inflation, Retail Sales, Empire Manufacturing, and Business Inventories on Tuesday; Consumer Price Inflation, the TIC US capital-investment flows report, Capacity Utilization, and Industrial Production on Wednesday; and Building Permits, Housing Starts, Initial Claims, and the Philadelphia Fed's latest survey on Thursday.

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