Despite a rise in the value of the US dollar and expectations of a rate rise in the US in the next two months, most commodity markets enjoyed gains last week.
Like equities, commodity markets seem to have come to terms very quickly with the likelihood of higher US rates and a stronger greenback.
But not gold which has emerged as the main casualty of the push towards a second rate rise in the US.
So in New York, Comex gold futures fell for the 8th day in a row on Friday night, our time, to end the week down and around three-month lows.
All that confident talk from gold bugs about how gold was on its way past $US1,300 an ounce has been blown away by the sell-off.
Prices fell on Friday as Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said an interest-rate increase could be appropriate in the coming months.
June gold ended down $US6.60, or 0.5%, to settle at $US1,213.80 an ounce. The settlement was the lowest since February 22, according to FactSet data.
That was a 3.1% fall for the week, which was the largest since the week ended November 6.
On Comex on Friday, July silver fell 7.4 cents, or 0.5%, to $US16.269 an ounce, with prices down about 1.6% for the week.
And July Comex copper edged up 1.2 cents, or 0.6%, on Friday to $US2.114 a pound, ending roughly 2.9% higher on the week.
May has turned out to be a miserable month for gold.
So far, gold prices have lost nearly 6% in May and could lose a little more on Monday and Tuesday.
It is a big turnaround from the first quarter when gold surged 16% on fears about slowing global growth (and especially the health of the US economy) – fears which are now behind us, or so the Fed and many investors believe.
But the Financial Times points out that hasn’t stopped investors putting more money into gold-backed or linked Exchange Traded Funds.
"After investors pumped $12.4bn into gold ETFs in the first quarter, the biggest inflow since 2009, there was a brief pause in April. But over the last four weeks $4.5bn has flowed in, according to Markit data, suggesting some investors think the rally could resume eventually,” The FT reported at the weekend.
And while gold is facing a problematic outlook, oil too is facing uncertainty – this time it’s to do with Thursday’s half yearly meeting of OPEC in Vienna. Nothing major will emerge (certainty not an agreement on production limits) from the meeting.
The oil market has stabilised since the cartel members last regularly-scheduled meeting in December.
So far this year, oil prices have fallen to less than $US27 a barrel in the case of US crude, and bounced to top $US50 a barrel last Thursday.
Oil prices are up more than 30% so far this year, with West Texas Intermediate crude oil trading at its highest price in seven months.
July West Texas Intermediate crude futures eased fell 15 cents, or 0.3%, to settle at $US49.33 a barrel in New York. That was up nearly 2% over the week.
In London, July Brent crude fell 27 cents, or 0.5%, to $US49.32 a barrel on Friday, up around 1.2% for the week.
The weekly drilling rig count report from Baker Hughes showed no change in the total number of oil and gas rigs in use last week across the US.
The oil rig count fell 2 to 316, according to driller Baker Hughes, but the number of gas rigs rose by two to 87. That left an unchanged total of 404 rigs in active service.
The total represents a 35% drop in the total number of rigs over the last year.
