Gold price gained on Friday after US fourth-quarter GDP numbers came in far lower than expected.
The US GDP came in at 2.6 percent – the smallest increase since the first quarter of 2014 and well short of the forecast 3.0 percent.
Spot gold was last at $1,280 per ounce, $3.60 compared to its last on Friday – it had climbed 1.8 percent during the session to end at $1,283.60 per ounce. Silver followed similar trading patterns, falling about 10 cents today to $17.15 per ounce but made a 1.5 percent gain on Friday’s session.
“Gold traded a bit higher in Friday session after the US GDP numbers came lower-than-expected, with market players speculating that Fed would be more patient in raising rates and that’s supportive for gold price,” said a report from Commerzbank.
Last Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said it can be “patient in beginning to normalise the stance of monetary policy”, indicating that the prospect of an interest-rate increase is still a couple of months away. The current market consensus is that the first rise will happen sometime in the second half of this year.
In wider markets, major US stocks indices fell more than a percent each on Friday, spilling over the negative sentiments to the Asian open this morning.
Asian stocks losses were led by the Shanghai Composite, slipping 1.44 percent currently. The Hang Seng is down 0.4 percent and the Nikkei 225 lower at 0.5 percent.
The latest Chinese HSBC PMI data out this morning was not helping either, coming in 0.1 percentage point below expectations at 49.7.
In the PGMs, platinum and palladium both followed gold lower today – platinum slipped seven dollars to $1,235 and palladium dropped three dollars to last trade at $772 per ounce.
The post Gold price gains after poorer-than-expected US GDP print appeared first on The Bullion Desk.
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