The price of gold edged lower again on Thursday and reached a new 2 1/2 week low. Gold for December delivery moved to $713.20, down $5.10 for the session. The metal touched as low as $708.10.
Gold prices have now dropped more than $30 in the three sessions. The metal slipped below a support level at around $717 with the tumble. In the bigger picture, gold has given back more than $225 over the last five weeks and has lost more than $300 from its record $1,033.90 from March.
The dollar saw mixed results against other major currencies on Thursday morning. The buck backed off a two-week high of 1.2388 against the euro despite data that showed German GDP fell 0.5% in the third quarter, meaning the Eurozone's biggest economy has officially slipped into recession. The greenback added to a Qsix-year high versus the pound, reaching as high as 1.4805.
In economic news, the Department of Commerce released its report showing that the trade deficit narrowed to $56.5 billion in September from $59.1 billion in August. Economists had been expecting the trade deficit to narrow to $57.0 billion.
Separately, a Labor Department report showed that jobless claims rose to 516,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 484,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to come in nearly unchanged compared to the 481,000 originally reported for the previous week.
Other metals also moved in the red in early trading. Silver dropped 28 cents to $2.954 an ounce and copper dropped 0.55 cent to $1.65 cents a pound.
Oil prices moved modestly higher and edged away from a 22-month low. Light sweet crude moved up 26 cents to $56.42 in early trading. In overnight trading, oil touched as low as $54.67, oil's lowest level since January 2007.
The Energy Information Administration's inventory data will be released Thursday morning, delayed a day because of Veteran's Day. Experts are expecting to see a build of about 1 million barrels for both crude oil and gasoline. Last week's data that showed crude oil inventories remained unchanged and gasoline inventories increased by 1.1 million barrels last week.
