Weekly Round-Up: Stronger US Dollar Weighs on Precious Metals

Gold and silver ended the week down following a 0.8-percent rise in the US dollar. Copper and Brent crude also ended the week on low notes.

The gold price dropped on Friday, seeing its biggest weekly decline in four weeks, according to Reuters. Down 0.2 percent, the yellow metal closed the week at $1,203.60 per ounce, down 1.6 percent.

Meanwhile, gold for June delivery was down 0.1 percent, at $1,203, as per The Wall Street Journal.

The fall coincided with a 0.8-percent rise in the US dollar due to a stronger-than-expected increase in US core consumer prices in April.

“Gold remains very much dependent on the U.S. economic data and traders are just trying to find out when the U.S. rate hike will be,” Bernard Dahdah, a Natixis (EPA:KN) analyst, told Reuters. “It’s not really exciting times for gold, there isn’t investor appetite for the metal and that means less liquidity.”

For its part, silver was down 0.4 percent, at $17.05 per ounce. The metal is also affected by the US currency.

Copper on the London Metal Exchange saw a decline of over 3 percent this week, trading at $6,200 a tonne, Reuters reported. That is its biggest weekly loss since January, and it was fueled by concerns about demand in China, the world’s top producer and purchaser of copper. Compared to this time last year, China’s imports of copper and copper alloy are down 14.7 percent.

“If Chinese consumers become comfortable with the outlook in the second half of the year, they’ll move beyond restocking activity to actually (boosting) production of finished products which would be the real kicker for demand and push prices higher,” Daniel Hynes, an analyst at ANZ (ASX:ANZ), told the news outlet.

According to MarketWatch, on Friday copper was trading on the COMEX at $2.83 a pound, down 1.6 percent.

Finally, Brent crude also fell on Friday, Reuters states in another article. It was down $0.90, at $65.64 a barrel.

The upcoming holiday weekend in the US and much of Europe seems to be creating some hesitance amongst investors. “No one wants to hold open positions ahead of a long weekend so books are being squared, bringing some consolidation,” said Carsten Fritsch, senior oil and commodities analyst at Commerzbank (ETR:CBK).

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