Gold Ends Week Just Shy of Record Close as Stocks Drop 3%, Oil Rises

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold Prices rose as much as $13.59 to reach as high as $1258.29 an ounce by early afternoon in New York on Friday, before falling back off in the last hour of trade but still ending with a gain of 0.9% on the day.

For the week, Gold Prices closed just $1.35 below the previous Friday's all-time record finish against the Dollar.Gold priced in Euros rose to almost €1014 an ounce.

Silver climbed to as high as $19.13 before it also dropped back a bit, but it still ended with a gain of 2.19%.

Platinum gained $8 to $1567.50, and copper gained 9 cents more to about $3.09.Gold Mining and silver equities rose throughout most of trade and ended with almost 4% gains.

US crude oil contracts meantime rose sharply towards $80 a barrel, adding 2.2% for the week, on worries over a developing storm in the Caribbean that may move toward oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

Treasury bonds rose, but the US Dollar index fell, as the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P shrugged off poor GDP data and ended near unchanged.

All 3 major US stock-market indices dropped 3% for the week, however.

A new financial regulation deal, reached by House and Senate members, was not as onerous as many had speculated it would be. Attention now turns to the cross-border regulations discussed at this weekend's G-20 summit.

New data meantime revised US economic growth for the first quarter lower, down from 3.0% to 2.7% annualized. The GDP deflator - a measure of inflation - was revised higher, up from 1.0% to 1.1%.

Next week's US economic highlights include Personal Income and Spending and PCE Prices on Monday; the Case-Shiller 20-city Index and Consumer Confidence on Tuesday; ADP Employment stats and Chicago PMI on Wednesday; Initial Jobless Claims, Construction Spending, the ISM Index, and Pending Home Sales on Thursday; and June's Non-Farm Payrolls data on Friday.

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