Understanding Gold Trading On The Easter Holiday

Gold traders are preparing for a quiet weekend ahead of Friday’s nonfarm payroll report. Gold traders will not be able to respond to the results until Monday’s session due to the holiday.  Gold is trading at 1202.60 while silver is steady at 16.748. Platinum is flat at 1155.50. All precious metals are trading well within their weekly range as the Easter holiday weekend begins.  On Thursday Gold edged up to $1207.30 in Asia before it fell back to $1195.83 by late morning in New York, but it then bounced back higher in the last five hours of trade and ended with a loss of just 0.24%.  Silver slipped to as low as $16.619 and ended with a loss of 1.3%.

Gold futures gave up some of the prior session’s sizable advance as a better-than-expected reading on jobless claims dented haven demand for the precious metal and other safety investments. In other metals trading, May silver shed 2.1 percent for the session to end at $16.701 an ounce, after jumping 2.8 percent a day earlier. It is down more than 2 percent from last Friday.

Gold eased off highs as the impact of a weaker dollar was offset by positive U.S. economic data that offered hope the labor market continues to expand even as growth has stalled, ahead of Friday’s important U.S. nonfarm jobs report.  The metal reversed initial gains after data showed the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, while February’s U.S. trade deficit narrowed to its lowest point since October 2009. The dollar, however, remained under pressure on views that U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter.

Investors turned their attention to Friday’s U.S. nonfarm payrolls, which economists polled by Reuters forecast to show an increase of 245,000 in March after a 295,000 rise in February.

“There was a lot of book-squaring ahead of the long Easter weekend. We can definitely see liquidity already thinning this afternoon and there is a lot of uncertainty about tomorrow’s nonfarm payrolls number,” said Afshin Nabavi, MKS SA head of trading.

Trading is expected to thin on Friday, when most U.S. markets will be closed for the Easter holiday, while some European markets will close from Friday through to Monday, reopening on Tuesday.

In base metals copper is flat at 2.733 off its lows earlier in the week at 2.70. Copper is likely to rebound in 2015 as “critical” producers struggle to ramp up production, Barclays said in a weekly note to clients. The bank says it believes copper prices will increase for the year. Three-month copper closed the Tuesday London Metal Exchange kerb session at $6,040/mt. The metal hit a 2015 year-to-date intraday three-month price low of $5,339.50/mt in January. The bank said it believes that despite a slowing China, demand should remain robust in 2015, supported by the economic recoveries in Europe, the US, and Japan.