The Conversation (0)
Gold looks set to end the week on a higher note, but overall the yellow metal is still poised for its third straight week of declines. Silver, alongside copper and oil, was also up on Friday.
“I’m not surprised to see some purchasing at these low levels, but we’re not expecting gold to go back to $1,200 by the end of the year,” Natixis analyst Bernard Dahdah told Reuters. “We’re on a slope downward towards $1,100. There is still some more room for the dollar to strengthen. We’ve got things we’re expecting next year, like higher interest rates, that will gradually push gold to lower levels.”
US gold futures for December delivery rose $10.40 to trade at $1,153.
Silver crept up 2.18 percent to $15.73 per ounce in Friday trading, having hit its lowest price since February 2010 earlier in the day.
On the base metals side, three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose 0.32 percent to $6,681.25 per tonne on Friday. The metal rose on a mixed US payrolls report that shows the country’s economy is proceeding well, with the jobless rate hitting a six-year low. The metal’s gains were capped by the dollar, which was trading near a four-year high.
Copper futures for December delivery on New York’s COMEX rose 0.6 percent, to $3.04 per pound, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
Finally, Brent crude oil rose $0.52, or 0.6 percent, to $83.39 a barrel, as per The Wall Street Journal.
“We’re seeing a little bit of paring of gains on [US oil prices] just from the initial miss on the headline number” in the recent employment report, Matt Smith, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric, told the Journal. He added, “we’ve not seen too much of a reaction from the dollar, and given that, we won’t see too much reaction from crude.”