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A weak dollar helped ease commodities this week as market watchers waited for Friday’s US jobs data to be released.
The dollar fell sharply against the yen and euro, on Thursday, while gold ticked up slightly in anticipation of weak US jobs data that was scheduled to be released on Friday. The release of US jobs data shows a 175,000 rise in non-farm payrolls for May and a slight rise in the jobless rate to 7.6 percent.
Despite having a good week, gold was under pressure with expectations that the Fed would ease up on its bond buying program as the US market recovers. On Friday, following the release of US jobs data, gold dropped $36 to $1,381.50 per ounce.
Silver also slipped, down 30 cents per ounce before finally settling at $21.70 on Friday.
“While the technical downtrend is still in place,” bullion market-maker Scotia Mocatta told Reuters, “The trend is weakening as gold slowly grinds higher.”
The weaker dollar also softened the losses in copper, which dropped by as much as two percent to $3.32 on Thursday, the metal’s biggest single-day loss since late May. This was triggered by dropping demand from China, the world’s largest consumer of copper, which offset news of supply issues. Just a day before, on Wednesday, copper prices had jumped to $3.37 after news of the Grasberg complex in Indonesia shutting down for three months following another deadly accident.
Meanwhile, oil prices took a jump after the largest oil field in the United Kingdom was shut down for the second time in a week and the United States planned to open a major refinery later this month. US crude oil also gained support after it was announced that a 405,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Whiting, Ind., is on schedule to restart by the end of June.