from Chris Mullen of GoldSeek...

Gold traded slightly lower in Asia and London on Thursday before it rose back near unchanged in early New York trade. Spot gold prices then fell back off after 9:30am EST, dropping as low as $647.20 by the London close ahead of a small rally higher in the last hour of trade.

That took the spot gold market over $3 off its low and left it with a loss of 0.84% for the day.

Silver dropped to as low as $12.92 by early afternoon before it rebounded about 1% off its low and ended with a loss of 1.21%.

Priced in Euros gold fell to about €486 per ounce, platinum lost $2 to $1,298, palladium lost $1 to $377, and copper fell slightly to around $3.38.

Gold and silver equities fell nearly 2% in the first half hour of trade and remained near their lows for most of the morning, but they then rallied higher throughout the majority of afternoon trade on Wall Street and ended with about 0.5% gains.

In the economy, initial US jobless claims came in ahead of expectations for the week-ending June 16th at 324,000 from the previous reading of 314,000. The monthly leading indicators reports showed a gain of 0.3% for May against 0.2% forecast on Wall Street. The Philadelphia Fed's factory activity index for June jumped to 18 from 4.2 last month.

The US Dollar index rose and Treasury bonds fell on the news, pushing interest rates higher.

In the broader markets WTI crude oil initially rose near $70 per barrel on news of a strike in Nigeria, but it then fell back off and ended slightly lower as it appeared the strike has had no significant impact on production or exports.

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P traded mostly lower in morning trade as oil prices rose, but they then climbed back higher in afternoon trade and ended with decent gains as oil prices fell back off and economic data came in strong.

Among the big names making news in the stock market were American Greetings, H&R Block, ICE and CBOT and CME, Bear Stearns, Blackstone, Dow Jones, and Luxottica and Oakley, which is merging with Ray-Ban.