Gold prices were also supported by reports that holdings of metal (ETFs) increased by more than 650,000 in January

The gold price hovered near unchanged Thursday at $1,747 per ounce amid relative calm in financial markets.  Strong auctions for French and Spanish sovereign debt helped keep a bid under European equity markets.  U.S. jobless claims fell last week to 367,000, slightly less than market expectations.  While the price of gold stabilized, the stronger jobs data helped boost the U.S. dollar, which pressured other commodity prices.  Oil and copper prices fell roughly 1% each to $96.95 per barrel and $3.80 per pound, respectively.

Gold prices were also supported by reports that holdings of metal exchange-traded funds (ETFs) increased by more than 650,000 in January.  This marked the first month of net inflows since October and signaled that buying interested in the yellow metal is on the rise.  The SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), the world’s largest gold ETF and a proxy for the price of gold, inched higher by $0.25, or 0.2%, to $169.56 per share on Wednesday.

Commenting on the gold price, Saxo Bank senior manager Ole Hansen wrote in a report to clients that “Buyers have returned to the euro, which is helping the situation in gold.  It had a bit of lacklustre profit-taking yesterday but didn’t break anything important on the downside, which helped confirm that being long is back in vogue.”
Hansen went on to say that “The last two weeks have done a heck of a lot to confidence, and we’ve seen that attempted corrections (in the price of gold) have been short-lived, so the mood has definitely changed, but overall, we are overbought quite significantly … so there will be some kind of consolidation.”

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