Gold Price Pares Weekly Drop from Record Highs as Bernanke Signals "Full Discussion" of QE3

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold climbed to $1794.24 early Friday before it fell back to $1765.20 inside 45 minutes of trade.

The Gold Price then rallied back as high as $1795.00 in New York and ended with a gain of 1.9% on the day, cutting its week-on-week drop to 3.0%.

Silver Prices fell to $40.20 per ounce in Asia and rose to $41.30 in London before falling back to $40.09 a little after 10:00 in New York.

Silver then rallied back higher into the close and ended with a gain of 0.5% for Friday, also losing some 3.0% for the week.

Both silver and the Gold Price then continued rising in after-hours electronic 'access' trade, going into London's long August Bank Holiday weekend at $41.40 and $1829 per ounce respectively.

The Gold Price in Euros climbed back over €1238, platinum gained $6.75 to $1821, and copper rose a couple of cents to about $4.10.

Gold Mining and silver equities waffled near unchanged for most of the morning, but they then climbed steadily higher in afternoon trade and ended with over 2% gains.

Failing to signal a third round of quantitative easing as some had expected, meantime, "In addition to refining our forward guidance, the Federal Reserve has a range of tools that could be used to provide additional monetary stimulus," US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told the annual Jackson Hole monetary policy summit in Wyoming.

Whilst not saying whether such tools include QE3, Bernanke did also says that a second day has been added to the Fed's next policy meeting in September to "allow a fuller discussion" of the economy, and the US central bank's possible response.

The US Dollar index fell and Treasuries pared early gains after Bernanke's speech saw the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P rise more than 1% higher.

Oil ended slightly higher as traders tracked Hurricane Irene.

New data reduced the US economic growth estimate for April-to-July down from 1.3% annualized to 1.0%, with domestic price inflation rising faster than previously thought at 2.4%.

Next week's US economic highlights include Personal Income and Spending, Core PCE Prices, and Pending Home Sales on Monday, the Case-Shiller 20-city Index and Consumer Confidence on Tuesday, ADP Employment, Chicago PMI, and Factory Orders on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims, Productivity, Unit Labor Costs, the ISM Index, and Construction Spending on Thursday, and August’s jobs data on Friday.

Please note: The wholesale London bullion market is closed Monday, and there will be no London Gold Market Report from GoldNews.

BullionVault's online gold and silver market will of course be open for business.