· Gold rose to the highest in nearly 10 months on Friday after after a closely watched snapshot of the U.S. job market revealed tepid late-summer hiring and almost no paycheck growth.
· The report keeps alive the close debate over whether the Federal Reserve has a green light to raise interest rates again this year given still-concerning low inflation readings, including within wage data.
· Spot gold was up 0.2 percent at $1,324.46 an ounce by 1:59 p.m. EDT (1759 GMT) after reaching $1,328.80, the highest since Nov. 9. It was set for a weekly gain of 2.6 percent.
· December gold GCZ7, +0.58% added $8.20, or 0.6%, to settle at $1,330.40 an ounce. It marked its highest finish since late September of last year, matching the settlement from Sept. 27, according to FactSet data. It climbed 2.5% for the week. The most-active contract’s roughly 4% August climb was the largest monthly gain since January.
· The Japanese yen, gold and sovereign bonds all rose early on Monday as North Korea’s latest nuclear test provoked the usual knee-jerk shift to safe havens, while futures pointed to a difficult day for global equities.
The dollar was marked down as deep as 109.22 JPY= yen at the opening, off a whole yen from late on Friday, but there was no follow-through selling and it was last at 109.84. While gold hit a 10-month high and was last up 0.9 percent at $1,335.90 XAU=.
· “Soft jobs and wage growth added to concerns from Thursday’s soft inflation data,” said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist of U.S. Bancorp Wealth Management.
· Data Friday showed the U.S. created 156,000 new jobs in August, a lighter-than-expected increase, but chalked up in large part to regular seasonal slowing. Unemployment rose a tick to 4.4% from a 16-year-low 4.3%, the Labor Department said. Wages have risen 2.5% in the past 12 months, unchanged from July.
· The report followed one from Thursday, which showed that the pace of inflation was little changed in July.
· “In our view, a strong rebound in inflation is needed before rate-hike expectations rise materially and help the dollar reverse its latest downtrend,” said Charalambos Pissouros, senior analyst with IronFX.
· “The minutes of the [Fed’s] July gathering showed that the number of policymakers who are concerned with regards to inflation has increased,” he said. Data after that meeting also “showed inflation remained subdued, casting more doubts on whether the softness in recent months can indeed be attributed to idiosyncratic factors.”
· Back on Comex, December silver SIZ7, +1.31% rose 24.1 cents, or 1.4%, to $17.816 an ounce, up 4% for the week to finish at the highest level since April.
· Spot palladium prices made their biggest one-day surge since March 2016 and reached the highest price in16-1/2 years after some U.S. automakers reported better-than-expected August sales and as demand was expected from Houston to replace flood-damaged vehicles after Hurricane Harvey.
· Spot palladium was 5.2 percent higher at $982 an ounce, the highest since February 2001. While Platinum was up 1.1 percent to $1,006, after rising to a six-month high at $1,009.
· U.S. financial markets will be closed on Monday, Sept. 4 in observance of Labor Day. Because Labor Day is a Federal holiday, banks and federal government offices will be shuttered.
Reference: Market Watch, Reuters
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