Gold prices headed higher on on Friday, as Treasury yields and the dollar fell, even though buoyed in part by a monthly climb in the U.S. unemployment rate, even as the number of jobs created in February rose more than expected.
Price action
-
Gold for April delivery
GC00,
+1.83% GCJ23,
+1.83%
gained $27.20, or 1.5%, to $1,861.80 per ounce on Comex, with prices for the most-active contract trading around 0.4% higher for the week, FactSet data show. -
Silver for May delivery
SI00,
+3.00% SIK23,
+3.00%
rose by 49.5 cents, or 2.5%, to $20.66 per ounce, paring a weekly loss of roughly 2.6%. -
Copper prices for May delivery
HGK23,
+0.25%
shed 1.6 cents, or 0.4%, to $4.0235 per pound. -
Palladium for June delivery
PAM23,
+0.71%
fell by $1.20, or 0.1%, to $1,373.50 per ounce, while platinum for April
PLJ23,
+1.89%
climbed by $6.20, or 0.7%, to $955.50 per ounce.
Market drivers
The U.S. created a robust 311,000 new jobs in February, the government reported on Friday.
Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast 225,000 new jobs. The increase in employment last month followed a revised 504,000 gain (initially 517,000) in January.
The unemployment rate, however, rose to 3.6% from 3.4%, and hourly wages saw its smallest increase in a year, up just 0.2%.
Gold prices climbed higher after the release of the jobs report, “reacting to a higher-than-expected unemployment rate, some cooling in wage inflation and a jobs created number significantly lower than the previous months,” said Jeff Klearman, portfolio manager at GraniteShares, which runs the GraniteShares Gold Trust
BAR,
“The numbers, while not outright indicative of a cooling labor market, may give the [Federal Reserve] reason to continue with its policy of small, 25 [basis point] rate increases, while waiting to see the cumulative effect of already implemented hikes,” he told MarketWatch.
Weakness in U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar also supported gold prices, he said, and “likely indicative of expectations the Fed will refrain from returning to its previous aggressive monetary policy,” said Klearman.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury
TMUBMUSD10Y,
was down by nearly 17 basis points at 3.75%, while the U.S dollar, as measured by the ICE U.S. Dollar index
DXY,
was down 0.9% at 104.38.
