MW: Gold fluctuates between small gains and losses
By Claudia Assis and Virginia Harrison, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)—Gold futures swerved between small gains and losses Friday, underpinned by a weaker dollar but for the most part lacking catalysts to generate trading action in either direction.
Gold for June delivery GCM2 +0.04% retreated $1.20, or 0.1%, to $1,640.60 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract had spent most its early hours in the black.
The metal’s trading down 1% for the week, having broadly missed out on safe-haven flows at the expense of U.S. bonds and the dollar.
On Friday, the dollar pushed lower against major rivals as European stocks moved higher after Germany’s Ifo Institute said its business-confidence gauge edged up to 109.9 in April from 109.8 in March, defying expectations for a pullback.
That boosted the euro and sent the greenback lower. The ICE dollar index DXY -0.34% stood recently at 79.270, off from the 79.589 seen late Thursday.
A weaker dollar is a generally positive for gold and other commodities as it makes them less expensive to holders of other currencies.
Investors will be eyeing International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington over the weekend, as well as Sunday’s first-round presidential vote in France.
President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist challenger François Hollande are expected to move to a head-to-head runoff on May 6. Most French opinion polls show Hollande would prevail in that runoff. Read about France's election.
The broader metals complex mostly traded higher, with silver bucking the trend. May silver SIK2 -0.41% slipped 7 cents, or 0.2%, to $31.73 an ounce.
Copper for May delivery HGK2 +1.42% added 6 cents, or 1.6%, to $3.69 per pound.
July platinum PLN2 +0.03% gained $2.50, or 0.2%, to $1,580.50 an ounce, while sister metal palladium for June delivery PAM2 +0.71% added $5.15, or 0.8%, to $668.45 an ounce.
Claudia Assis is a San Francisco-based reporter for MarketWatch.
Virginia Harrison is a MarketWatch reporter based in Sydney. Barbara Kollmeyer in Madrid contributed to this report.
