By William L. Watts, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — Gold futures edged higher in electronic trade Wednesday, as investors prepared for the reopening of floor trade in the wake of super storm Sandy.
Gold for December delivery GCZ2 +0.55% rose $8.10, or 0.5%, to $1,720.20 an ounce in electronic trade. Floor trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange was set to reopen after being closed Monday and Tuesday due to an evacuation order.
Gold rose Tuesday to settle at $1,712.10 an ounce.
Wednesday will also see the reopening of U.S. equity markets after the first weather-related, two-day closure since 1888.
But it will probably take an event such as Friday’s U.S. nonfarm payrolls report to break gold out of the relatively narrow trading range of $1,700 to $1,720 an ounce seen over the past five sessions, wrote strategists at KBC Bank in Brussels, in a note.
U.S. stock index futures pointed to a higher open for Wall Street as New York and a large chunk of the East Coast deal with power and transport problems amid the devastation left by the megastorm. See: Stock futures higher as Wall Street set to reopen .
The dollar, meanwhile, edged lower. The dollar index DXY -0.30% , a measure of the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, fell 0.2% to 79.733.
A weaker dollar tends to boost gold and other commodities priced in the currency.
Silver futures SIZ2 +1.52% rose 39 cents to $32.21 an ounce.
Palladium futures PAZ2 +2.49% rose $12.70 an ounce to $608.86, while platinum PLZ2 -0.20% gained $17.90 to $1,571.50.
William L. Watts is MarketWatch's European bureau chief, based in Frankfurt.
