Gold futures rose Friday night, our time, erasing a loss for the week, but oil fell last week, despite gains on Friday.
The long weekend in the US for the Labor Day holiday today means commodity traders will play it safe for the next day or so until US traders return from summer breaks to start the more active autumn (Fall) and winter trading periods.
The weaker US jobs figures appeared to lower the chances of for an rate rise at the Federal Reserve meeting later this month, and instead seems to have thrown it forward to December.
The employment report pushed gold higher in early trading on Friday night, our time, to above $US1,333 an ounce, but it lost ground in late trading as investors hedged their bets on the timing of a rate increase and played it safe ahead of the Labor Day long weekend.
By the time the price settled, Comex December gold had added $US9.60, or 0.7%, to end at $1,326.70 an ounce.
That was enough to give a gain of just under 0.1% for the week, according to futures pricesI and FactSet data. Gold had hit a two-month low on Wednesday.
Comex December silver jumped 42.3 cents, or 2.2%, to $US19.366 an ounce.
That left it up 3.3% for the week after suffering August’s 8% plus slide.
The debate over the speed and aggressiveness of Fed interest-rate changes has been linked to each economic release, but the jobs report carried additional weight for financial markets.
Other metals ended higher Friday. December Comex copper settled at $US2.078 a pound, up less than half a cent, but down about 0.3% for the week. Platinum and palladium both rose on Friday but lost ground over the week. Oil futures also rallied on Friday night in the wake of the weak August jobs report.
Also helping prices was the call by Russian President Putin called for producers to agree to limit output (but not freeze) at an upcoming informal meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Algeria later this month.
Despite Friday’s rose, oil prices, meanwhile, suffered their worst weekly loss since early July. In fact before the rise on Friday night, prices were staring at the biggest weekly loss since the lows of January.
In New York, October West Texas Intermediate crude futures jumped $US1.28, or 3%, to settle at $US44.44 a barrel.
That still left prices down 6.7% for the week (instead of nearly 10%!). It was still the biggest weekly loss in two months.
In London, November Brent crude futures climbed $US1.38, or 3%, to $US46.83 a barrel, trimming the week’s losses to 5.3%.
Friday’s weekly report on rig use from Baker Hughes had no impact even though it showed an increase of 1 in the number of active oil rigs to 407.
That was after no move the week before. The number of gas rigs in ruse rose by 8 to 90, taking the total number of active rigs to 497. That’s the highest for more than three months.
