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Gold futures on Friday swung between small gains and losses as investors watched for a report on the labor market in March, which may offer some clues about the state of American jobs even if it doesn’t entirely reveal the extent of the damage of coronavirus business shutdowns.
Friday’s nonfarm-payrolls report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will indicate how many workers the U.S. economy added last month, with average consensus estimates from economists for ais expected to show nonfarm payrolls suffered an 84,000 drop. However, most of the data were collected in the first half of the month before many of the bulk of business shutdowns occurred to combat the spread of coronavirus.
On Thursday, gold gained some buoyancy on the heels of a report on weekly jobless claims that showed a record 6.6 million people sought unemployment benefits, coming after a report last week came in at a then-record 3.3 million claims.
“But the short term game-changer for gold came with the release of the US jobless claims.” wrote Stephen Innes, chief market strategist at AxiCorp, in a Friday research note. “In addition to being a new record weekly rise, the data was above the highest expectations,” he wrote.
However, Innes says that gold may be a “bit stretched” after its Thursday gain.
June gold futures GCM20, +0.08% on Comex was up $1, or less than 0.1%, at $1,638.80 an ounce, after surging 2.9% on Thursday, marking its first gain in five session. For the week, gold is set for a weekly advance of 0.8%, according to FactSet data.
May silver SIK20, -0.85% was trading 4 cents, or 0.3%, lower at $14.620 an ounce. For the week, gold’s sister metal is looking at a weekly gain of 0.6%.
