Gold fell 8.3-percent on the week with Friday marking the seventh consecutive lower close. Golds appeal as a flight to safety or as a hedge against future inflationary pressure from liquidity injections could not support gold from massive fund liquidations.
December copper settled the week nearly unchanged at $2.1795 a pound. Concerns over the slowdown in the global economy have sent copper 40-percent lower in the past few months. Inventories stored in London Metal Exchange warehouses fell 575 metric tons Friday, at 211,450 short tons.
The latest U.S. consumer confidence data showed the largest monthly decline on record in October and construction starts on new homes fell to a 17 1/2-year low in September.
December silver fell 83 cents on the week, settling at $9.335 an ounce, January platinum finished the week $78.25 lower at $881 an ounce, and December palladium fell $18.5 $174.50 an ounce.
Energy
Crude oil fell over $4 on the week, with the December contract settling $4.05 lower at $73.99 a barrel. Rising inventories of crude oil are increasing concerns that the slowing global economy will continue to eat away at demand.
U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 5.6 million barrels to 308.2 million barrels in the week to Oct. 10, the Energy Information Administration reported. Domestic refiners were up by 91,000 barrels per day at 14.12 million bpd, EIA said. Domestic refinery utilization rose 1.3-percent to 82.2-percent of capacity last week.
OPEC, which controls an estimated 40-percent of the world's oil supply, called a special meeting for next Friday in Vienna, Austria to discuss the recent collapse in energy prices.
Analysts are expecting OPEC to cut production by as much as 1 million barrels a day in an attempt to stop the slide in prices, in addition to the already 500,000 barrel per day cut announced last month.
