Gold Gains On The Week

The first week of January proved to be a surprisingly good one for gold: it's the first week in five in which the metal's closed with a gain. At the start of the new year, the price of gold was below US$1,100. It was easy to argue that December's drop hadn't ended. There was talk of U.S. rates being raised, and the U.S. dollar was being bolstered by them. In consequence, gold was suffering.

As the week wore on, $1,100 became a memory. Even before the spurt-up that had accompanied this morning's disappointing jobs report, gold had resumed its climb. This 30-day chart, courtesy of Kitco, shows it:

As you can see, despite gold's afternoon surge-up to near $1,140 - to $1,137.50 - today's closing price, although a day's high, was not quite a weekly high. Interday, it wasn't: gold poked its nose slightly above $1,140 two days ago.

Movement this week was good with respect to the greenback. Although the U.S. dollar index was battered down below 74.5 by the close, it was lower earlier this week. Today's low of 77.353 was higher than the weekly low of 77.087 set on Tuesday, as this Goldseek.com graph shows:

Kitco has thoughtfully put the two together by constructing an index of gold prices that filters out the movements of the U.S. dollar. Their series shows that, if the greenback's influence is factored out [as done by the blue line], gold has made a five-week high:



I have to admit that gold's rise this afternoon surprised me. After the morning jolt-up due to the non-farm payroll data release, the price had mostly sunk back. I had assumed that it was going back to quiescence, and that the U.S. dollar's recovery was a restabilization too. As became evident in the afternoon, I was wrong on that assumption. Fooled by the graphs that were, perhaps.