Metals Price Watch: Gold Price Recoups Earlier Losses

iNVEZZ.com, Thursday, July 25: Gold price has risen for four consecutive trading sessions, boosted by Fed assurances that any changes to its gold-friendly quantitative easing policy would be data-dependent. But strong US housing data on Wednesday caused a sharp decline in prices. The metal fell further in early trading on Thursday, after a break below key support prompted more buyers to cash in. Still, later in the day gold managed to bounce back and returned to around levels seen at yesterday’s close. The other precious metals have all fallen today.

Meanwhile copper price has suffered a decline today as concerns over slowdown in China outweighed the impact of positive US and EU data released yesterday. Copper’s fall has been mirrored by declines in all the other base metals earlier today.
**Gold and silver**
Gold price has plunged today to as low as $1,311.20 an ounce as traders hurried to cash in once the key support at $1,321 was breached. However, the metal rebounded in afternoon trading and as of 14:04 BST was trading at $1,323.86, up from a Wednesday close of $1,320.69. Traders’ sentiment was probably boosted by US jobless claims data released at 12:30 BST, which showed that jobless claims had risen by 7,000 to 343,000 in the week ended July 20 from a revised 336,000 the prior period. The median forecast of 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected 340,000. The jobless claims data was expected to be closely watched by traders ahead of a Fed meeting next week that should provide fresh clues on the US central bank stance on quantitative easing.

The other precious metals have all fallen today, with the silver price having slid 1.6 percent to $19.82 an ounce, before stabilising at $20.15 as of 14:15 BST. Platinum price has declined to $1,425.49 an ounce, while palladium price has lost 1.4 percent to $733.97 an ounce.
**Base metals**
Copper suffered in early trading on the London Metal Exchange today, as positive US and EU data couldn’t offset concerns over economic slowdown in China, the world’s biggest consumer. Data on Wednesday showed manufacturing activity in China at an 11-month low in July, pointing to more challenges for the country where year-on-year economic growth has fallen in nine of the last 10 quarters.

!m[Copper Declines on Worries about China Economic Growth](/uploads/story/4342/thumbs/pic1_inline.jpg)
We think that China is going to continue to be under a bit of pressure and that could weigh on the base metals market a bit more,” said Natalie Rampono, commodity strategist at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, as quoted by Reuters.
Copper for delivery in three months on the LME $6,990 a metric ton by 09:10 BST, after having fallen to as low as $6,979 earlier.
Among the other base metals, aluminium price has lost 0.85 percent to $1,835.25 a metric ton; lead price has been down 0.35 percent at $2,057.50; tin price has been down 0.41 percent at $19,426; nickel price has declined 0.86 percent to $14237.00 and zinc price has been 0.33 percent down at $1878.75 a metric ton.