Gold Ends Week $15 Lower, Unchanged in Euros, as Oil & Stocks Plunge, Silver Loses 9%
From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...
The Gold Price recovered $4.47 an ounce to $1067.37 in Asia on Friday, before it plummeted as $1049.27 by a little before the London opening.
Chopping its way back higher in London trade, gold then fell back again, hitting a new 3-month low of $1044.50 at midday in New York and finally ending East Coast trade with a loss of 1.0% on the day.
The Gold Price pushed $20 higher in post-Comex electronic trade, finishing the week at $1066 an ounce, unchanged from the previous Friday in Euros, and higher against Sterling, with a $15 drop in US Dollars.
Silver fell as much as $0.76 to $14.46 an ounce in Friday's Asian dealing, before it bounced back higher into the close, but still ended with a loss of 3.8% on the day, down 9% for the week in dollars.
Platinum lost $41.50 to $1462.50, and copper fell another couple of cents to about $2.86.
Gold Mining and silver equities waffled on either side of unchanged for most of Friday, but they then rocketed higher in the last couple of hours of trade and ended with over 5% gains, some 4% up for the week.
Crude oil fell for a third straight day to under $70 a barrel at one point as the US Dollar index rose again on continuing worries over sovereign debt in Europe that pushed the Euro even lower.
Treasuries rose on hopes that next’s week sale of $81 billion worth of supply of US notes will go better than other debt sales around the world recently.
The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P traded notably lower on persistent economic and fiscal worries, but all three indices rallied back higher in late trade and ended with slight gains.
The Bureau for Labor Studies said US employers shedding 20,000 jobs in January, against the increase of 15,000 expected.
The statistical small-business Net Birth/Death adjustment subtracted 427,000 payrolls from January’s data, but the unemployment rate actually slipped from 10.0% to 9.7%.
Consumer credit shrank less than expected, new data showed.
Next week’s economic highlights include Wholesale US Inventories on Tuesday, the Trade Balance and Treasury Budget on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims, Retail Sales, and Business Inventories on Thursday, and Michigan Sentiment on Friday.
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