Gold faces third weekly decline as dollar, Treasury yields firm

May 6: Gold prices edged lower on Friday and looked set to fall for a third straight week, weighed down by a robust dollar and rising yields, while investors await the U.S. jobs report to assess its impact on monetary policy.

FUNDAMENTALS


* Spot gold fell 0.4% to $1,869.26 per ounce, as of 0137 GMT, while U.S. gold futures slipped 0.4% to $1,869.10. Bullion has declined about 1.5% so far this week.

* Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields firmed, while the dollar held near a 20-year high against a basket of currencies, making non-yielding bullion expensive for other currency holders.

* New claims for U.S. unemployment benefits increased to a more than two-month high last week, but remained at a level consistent with tightening labor market conditions and further wage gains that could keep inflation hot for a while.

* Investors will focus on U.S. Labor Department’s non-farm payrolls numbers for April due later in the day.

* The Fed on Wednesday raised its benchmark rate by half a percentage point, the most in 22 years, but Chairman Jerome Powell explicitly ruled out a 75 bps raise in a coming meeting.

* The Bank of England sent a stark warning that Britain risks a double-whammy of a recession and inflation above 10% as it raised interest rates on Thursday to their highest since 2009, hiking by quarter of a percentage point to 1%.

* SPDR Gold Trust , the world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, said its holdings fell 0.4% on Thursday.

* In other metals, spot silver slipped 1.1% to $22.25 per ounce, platinum declined 2.9% to $952.67 and palladium fell 0.6% to $2,174.64.

DATA/EVENTS (GMT) 0600 UK Halifax House Prices MM April 0600 Germany Industrial Output MM March 0645 France Reserve Assets Total April 1230 US Non-Farm Payrolls April 1230 US Unemployment Rate April 1230 US Average Earnings YY April