Gold Prices Break to Upside, Volume Thin

Updated from 9:10 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Gold prices Monday were moving moderately higher on thin volume and a weaker U.S. dollar.

Forget Gold, Buy Platinum

Gold for June delivery, the most actively traded contract, was rising $7.60 to $1,133.70 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices Monday have traded as high as $1,134.80 and as low as $1,120.80. The U.S. dollar index was slipping 0.16% to $81.04. Gold's spot price was up over $6, according to Kitco's gold index.

Gold prices were digesting the U.S. unemployment data from Friday. The Labor Department said the U.S. added 162,000 nonfarm payrolls in March, while the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7%. The data was in line with expectations and indicative of a sustained economic recovery. Investors responded by buying up riskier assets like gold. On the flip side, a positive jobs number could result in the Federal Reserve raising rates sooner than expected, which would boost the U.S. dollar and weigh on gold prices over the long term.

Gold prices rose 1.17% last week as traders took advantage of a thinner market. Many analysts expect the trend to continue Monday with London markets closed for the Easter holiday. "[With] the physical market ... closed, I would look for a resumption of transient patterns in Tuesday and beyond of [this] week," advises Jon Nadler, senior analyst at Kitco.com. "The exaggerated moves that we saw [last week] are indicative of the fact that this is few players pushing around sufficient sums of money to make for outsized moves." Many analysts are still looking at a range for gold prices between $1,080 and $1,130 with an overhead resistance level at $1,150 an ounce.

Silver prices were up 22 cents to $18.11 while copper was rising 5 cents to $3.63. Platinum was popping $33 to $1,708.60 as economy recovery hopes spurred demand for the metal. Platinum along with palladium are used in cars and many analysts look to auto manufacturing to increase substantially as the economy and unemployment improve.

Mining stocks, sometimes a more leveraged way to invest in gold, were higher. Barrick Gold(ABX) was trading at $39.74 while Newmont Mining(NEM) was higher at $53.88. Large-cap miners Kinross Gold(KGC) and Goldcorp(GG) were trading up over 1% at $17.87 and $38.92, respectively.