From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold Prices rose to find over $5 gains at $736.10 in Asia on Weds before falling back off in London and dropping even further in New York.

By noon EST the Gold Market saw losses as low as $726.10, but it then rallied back in the last hour of trade and ended with a small gain for the session.

Silver rose to as high as $13.462 in early New York trade before it too dropped, hitting as low as $13.20 before it also rallied into the close to end with a small gain.

Gold Priced in Euros rose to about €517, platinum gained $15 to $1356, palladium gained $5 to $351, and copper rose a couple of cents to over $3.75.

Gold and silver mining equities opened briefly higher, but they fell back off for most of the rest of trade and ended over 1% lower as gold, silver, and the major indices all dropped off heading into their respective closes.

On the data front, the ISM index of US service industries came in for Sept. just below forecasts. The MBA’s report showed US mortgage applications were down 2.7% last week, while the ADP’s jobs report showed employers added 58,000 jobs in September.

Thursday at 12:30 GMT brings the Jobless Claims data for last week, expected at 310,000, and at 14:00 GMT is the Factory Orders report for August, forecast to show a decline of 2.8%. Most traders are already looking forward to Friday’s official US government jobs report.

In the broader commodity markets, oil traded on either side of unchanged near $80.00 after a confusing US inventory report kept traders guessing. Crude inventories were expected to fall and instead built 1.2 million barrels, while gasoline and distillates were expected to build and instead fell 100,000 barrels and 1.2 million barrels respectively.

US refinery utilization rose 0.6% to 87.5%, but it's still considered to be running at a low rate for this time of the year.

The US Dollar index rose and Treasury bonds fell on the ISM Services report. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P all fell by around 0.5% on uncertainty over this Friday’s jobs report and its impact on what the Federal Reserve will do with US interest rates. Analysts also remain apprehensive about upcoming earnings reports on Wall Street. They may show significant impacts due to August’s credit problems.

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