Gold and Silver Prices Edge Lower

Gold prices slid 1% on Thursday as data on U.S. weekly jobless claims showed unexpected fall, boosting the dollar. Today’s better than expected data raised investors’ expectations that Friday’s non-farm data will show an improvement over the previous reading. Silver prices are also lower in trading today.

If the data on U.S. non-farms jobs turns out to be better than expected then it would almost shut the door for any possible quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve.

At last check, Spot gold was sliding 0.86 percent at $1,638.40 an ounce on Thursday, having fallen by 1 percent so far this week.

U.S. Gold futures for June delivery were dropping 0.92 percent at $1,638.80 an ounce.

Commenting over gold’s performance in the short run, Ole Hansen, Vice President, SAxo bank said to Reuters, “The focus for the next 24 hours will be the jobless report tomorrow, the (jobless) claims were a bit lower than expected and could have done some of the damage.”

“We are still range-bound, but people do worry that the technical picture could increasingly turn negative over the coming weeks unless we see a weak number tomorrow, added Hansen.

However, the gold’s slide was limited thanks to recovery in the euro as ECB’s President Mario Draghi said that any meddling with bank’s current easing cycle would be premature. The Bank also kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1%. The euro also got some push following successful bond auctioning in France and Spain on Thursday.

Meanwhile, demand for physical gold continues to be weak in India-world’s biggest importer of the metal.  Traders say that weakness in Indian rupee-which plunged to its lowest level against the dollar for last four months, curtailed the import demand.

Among some other precious metal markets, Silver was sliding 0.9 percent at $30.32 an ounce. Platinum was losing 0.5 percent on the day at $1,548.49 an ounce, while palladium trading lower 0.6 percent at $662.22 an ounce.

The iShares Silver Trust (ETF) (NYSE: SLV) is currently trading 1.75% lower at $29.26, the ProShares Ultra Silver (ETF) (NYSE: AGQ) is currently trading 3.37% lower at $47, and the ProShares UltraShort Silver (ETF) (NYSE: ZSL) is currently trading 3.47% higher at $11.93.

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Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.