Gold Prices Fall on Jobs Data, Dollar
(Updated to account for price movements.)
NEW YORK (
) -- A strengthening U.S. dollar drew money out of the red-hot gold market Friday, with the declines in
accelerating late in the day.
Gold prices for December delivery plunged below the $1,200-per-ounce level and the record highs reached on Thursday. In open-cry trading on the Comdex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, the contract lost $48.60 to settle at $1,168.80 an ounce. Gold for February delivery, meanwhile, the most heavily traded contract, fell $48.80 to $1,169.50, settling close to its intraday low of $1,167.90. The high was $1,213.90.
In electronic trading, gold prices continued to deteriorate. Recently, the February contract was down $61.40 at $1,156.90 an ounce.
Data from the Labor Department, which registered
far fewer job losses in November
than experts were expecting, helped shove the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
up by more than 125 points immediately after the opening bell, while the
S&P 500
spiked by more than 12 points. Stocks then dramatically reversed direction before moderating toward the end of the session.
The greenback, meanwhile, strengthened against a range of foreign currencies -- the dollar index jumped by more than 1% Friday -- and other safe-haven assets declined in value along with gold, including the benchmark 10-Year Treasury.
Gold Selloff Won't Last |
var config = new Array(); config<BRACKET>"videoId"</BRACKET> = 54235567001; config<BRACKET>"playerTag"</BRACKET> = "TSCM Embedded Video Player"; config<BRACKET>"autoStart"</BRACKET> = false; config<BRACKET>"preloadBackColor"</BRACKET> = "#FFFFFF"; config<BRACKET>"useOverlayMenu"</BRACKET> = "false"; config<BRACKET>"width"</BRACKET> = 265; config<BRACKET>"height"</BRACKET> = 255; config<BRACKET>"playerId"</BRACKET> = 1243645856; createExperience(config, 8); |
Gold-mining stocks, which are leveraged to the price of the yellow stuff, also took it on the nose Friday. Shares of
Barrick Gold
(ABX)
, which recently unwound its hedge book, exposing itself fully to gold prices, were tumbling more than 9% late in the session, while
Newmont Mining
(NEM) - Get Report
was trading lower by 4.8%.
Shares of
AngloGold Ashanti
(AU) - Get Report
and
Yamana Gold
(AUY) - Get Report
were off 4% and 5.3%, respectively.
Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold
(FCX) - Get Report
shares were down 5%.
The physically-backed ETF
SPDR Gold Shares
(GLD) - Get Report
was falling 4.6% to $115.23.
Market Vectors Gold Miners
(GDX) - Get Report
was down 5.2% to $50.60, while shares of
Market Vectors Juniors
(GDXJ) - Get Report
were lower by about 5.2% to $27.02.
-- Written by Scott Eden in New York
Follow TheStreet.com on
and become a fan on
Scott Eden has covered business -- both large and small -- for more than a decade. Prior to joining TheStreet.com, he worked as a features reporter for Dealmaker and Trader Monthly magazines. Before that, he wrote for the Chicago Reader, that city's weekly paper. Early in his career, he was a staff reporter at the Dow Jones News Service. His reporting has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Men's Journal, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, and the Believer magazine, among other publications. He's also the author of Touchdown Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2005), a nonfiction book about Notre Dame football fans and the business and politics of big-time college sports. He has degrees from Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis.
