MW: Gold futures climb as the euro gains on dollar
By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Gold futures advanced in Asia Wednesday, riding the euro’s gains against the dollar after a European Central Bank official suggested he saw merit in giving the region’s bailout fund a banking license.
Gold futures for August delivery GCQ2 +0.69% rose $9.60, or 0.6%, to $1,585.80 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The metal lost $1.20 in a regular session in New York Tuesday after a choppy trading session.
The gains came as the euro dropped against the dollar early in the European trading session.
The euro EURUSD +0.4755% , which had dropped as low as $1.2052 earlier in the Asian day, had recovered to $1.2096, as compared with $1.2066 in North America late on Tuesday. The ICE dollar index DXY -0.30% , meanwhile, fell to 83.782 from 83.954 earlier in the day and from 84.009 in New York on Tuesday.
The euro’s advance followed comments by ECB policy maker Ewald Nowotny suggesting he saw an argument supporting giving the European Stability Mechanism a banking license, a move that would give it access to funding from the ECB.
A weakened dollar tends to support prices of commodities, such as gold, that are benchmarked in the currency.
Elsewhere in the metals complex, September futures for silver SIU2 +0.46% and palladium PAU2 +0.65% rose 0.4% to $26.91 per ounce and 0.5% to $564.10 per ounce, respectively.
October platinum prices PLV2 +0.40% climbed 0.4% to $1,391.60 an ounce, while copper for delivery in September HGU2 +0.18% reversed losses to climb 0.1% to $3.36 a pound.
Varahabhotla Phani Kumar is a reporter in MarketWatch's Hong Kong bureau.
