Commodity Blog

Gold futures experienced their biggest one-day drop in four weeks. Following a strong July jobs report, which spurred the US dollar and rallied stocks, the yellow metal declined as much as 1%, the steepest one-day decline in a month.

September gold futures tumbled $11.30, or 0.89%, to $1,263.10 per ounce at 16:38 GMT on Friday. Gold prices have been in retreat since hitting a two-month high of $1,280 on Tuesday. This means the yellow metal is on track to record a weekly loss of around 0.5%, the first weekly loss in a month.

Silver, the sister commodity to gold, is also contracting to end the trading week. September silver futures plunged $0.35, or 2.10%, to $16.28 an ounce. The white metal is poised to post a weekly decline of 2.3%, the biggest weekly drop since the middle of June.

The precious metals were impacted by an impressive jobs report this week. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the US economy added 209,000 new jobs in July as the unemployment rate plummeted to a 16-year low of 4.3%. This also means that more than one million new jobs have been created under the Trump administration’s watch.

With a stellar labor market, the US dollar gained some momentum as the greenback spiked nearly 1% on Friday. The US dollar has been slipping over the last few months, falling to its lowest level in two years. A stronger dollar is bad for commodities like gold and silver because it makes it more expensive for foreign investors to purchase.

Despite tepid wage inflation, this could provide further ammunition for the Federal Reserve to pull the trigger on a third rate hike in 2017 before the end of the year. The US central bank has been weighing its options when it comes to raising interest rates because of mixed US economic data.

Gold is generally sensitive to a rising-rate environment because it increases the opportunity cost and sends investors into yield-bearing assets.

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