NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Gold futures ended Thursday's volatile trading down for a second session, as the U.S. dollar traded mixed following big rate cuts by major European central banks.
Gold for February delivery, the most active contract, closed down $5, or 0.6%, at $765.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. It dropped to as low as $763 earlier, the lowest since Nov. 20, but also rose to $790.
The front-month December contract, which expires on Dec. 29, also ended lower at $763.80. Open interest, or the number of outstanding contracts of the December contract, stood at 1,637 Thursday, or 163,700 ounces, according to Comex data.
Gold inventories held by the Comex for futures delivery stood at 2,918,028 ounces as of Wednesday, up 10,004 ounces from a day ago, according to latest data from the exchange.
In currencies trading, the dollar erased earlier gains against the euro but was still higher against the British pound. The dollar index , which tracks the value of the greenback against a basket of its major rivals, fell 1.3%. See Currencies.
Gold prices, denominated in dollars, tend to move in the opposite direction of the greenback.
The Bank of England dropped its key lending rate by a full percentage point to 2%, the lowest level for the benchmark since 1939. The European Central Bank also slashed its key lending rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 2.5%. The cut is the largest in the ECB's 10-year history.
While the dollar has been the beneficiary of bigger-than-expected rate cuts in Europe, tomorrow's U.S. jobs data could add pressures to the dollar, analysts said.
"The focus is likely to shift back toward the U.S. jobs numbers Friday," wrote Marc Chandler, a currencies analyst at Brown Brothers Harriman. "Market participants may be reluctant to attempt a break out of the euro's recent range ahead of the jobs data."
Separately, shares of mining company Vale declined 3.7% after the company said Thursday that it will cut nickel production and shut down some nickel-mining operations in Canada, citing "the conditions prevailing in the global nickel market." See Latin American Markets.
Spot trading
In gold spot trading, the London afternoon gold-fixing price -- a benchmark for gold traded directly between big institutions -- stood at $773.25 an ounce Thursday, up $7 from Wednesday.
Holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust, the largest gold exchange-traded fund, stood at 758.12 tons on Wednesday, unchanged for a fifth session, according to the latest data from the fund. The SPDR Gold Trust fell 0.8% to $75.59
In other metals, March silver futures fell 0.5% to $9.52 an ounce. January platinum slid 0.9% to $798.80 an ounce and March palladium fell 1.1% to $172.25 an ounce.
March copper dropped 5.5% to $1.4695 a pound.
On the equities side, the Amex Gold Bugs Index , which tracks the share prices of major gold companies, rose 1.8% to 221.94.
The iShares Gold Trust exchange-traded fund rose 0.8% to $76.77, while the iShares Silver Trust ETF ) lost 0.7% to $9.44. The Market Vectors-Gold Miners ETF gained 1.5% to $24.38.
