Gold dipped today and silver tumbled amid speculations that positive data from the United States will encourage the Federal Reserve to start monetary tightening earlier. While bullion ticked up during the early trading session, it went down by now. Yesterday’s employment report from Automatic Data Processing and today’s unemployment claims data were rather positive, giving hope that tomorrow’s nonfarm payrolls will be good too. The resulting optimism reduced demand for safe assets, hurting the appeal of precious metals. February contract for delivery of gold edged down 0.26 percent to $1,207.50 per troy ounce as of 21:01 GMT on COMEX today. Silver sank as much as 1.35 percent to $16.32 per ounce.
The same optimism that hurt precious metals was helping copper as traders hoped that economic growth in the USA will result in higher demand for industrial metals. Riskier
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