Gold futures on Friday logged a daily and weekly advance on the back of U.S.-China trade-war jitters, which flared up late Thursday and roiled global stocks, driving investors into assets perceived as havens.
A mostly lackluster U.S. employment reading for the March, which nicked the dollar index and buttressed already deep losses for stocks, also helped lift gold.
The White House said in a statement after the market close Thursday that President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Trade Representative to consider an extra $100 billion in Chinese goods to face tariffs and to identify the products that could be targeted.
June gold GCM8, +0.66% closed up $7.60, or 0.6%, at $1,336.10 an ounce, while the commodity booked a weekly gain of 0.9%, or $11.90, based settlement values for the most-active contract last week. The metal has posted a weekly gain for two of the past three weeks.
May silver SIK8, +0.06% used both for industrial purposes, and so more sensitive to trade issues, and as a haven financial asset, edged 0.7 cent higher, or less than 0.1%, at $16.362 an ounce, after starting Friday trading in the red. For the week, silver futures gained 0.7%.
A Chinese holiday on Friday kept trading volume thin.
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, -0.42% which measures the greenback against six major rivals, slipped about 0.3% to 90.10 after finishing at a two-week high Thursday. The dollar finished the week with a slight loss. A weaker dollar can make commodities more attractive to buyers using other currencies.
"Gold was given a lift by the soft U.S. dollar. The inverse relationship between the two markets is holding up, and even though there are concerns about the economic conflict between the US and China, it is the greenback that is having the biggest influence," wrote David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets.
"The gold market is still fairly rangebound and we would need to see a break above $1,350 or below $1,300 before traders get excited," he wrote.
Government data showed that the U.S. created 103,000 new jobs in March to mark the smallest gain since last fall, although within the tightest labor market in nearly two decades. The unemployment rate remained at a 17-year low of 4.1%. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a stronger gain of 170,000 nonfarm jobs.
For inflation watchers, including those interested in gold as an inflation hedge, average wages rose 8 cents, or 0.3%, to $26.82 an hour. The 12-month increase in pay picked up slightly to 2.7% from 2.6%.
"The number which grasped the most attention amidst investor and made an impact on the dollar index is the nonfarm employment change," said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst with Think Markets. "It is a big miss and the market reaction is adverse and gold has moved higher on the back of this. Today's data is not something which Trump will be tweeting about."
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Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's in a talk at the Economic Club of Chicago said he advocated a "patient" approach to raising interest rates.
Meanwhile, copper for May deliveryHGK8, -1.17% shed 1.6 cents, or 0.5%, at $3.0585 a pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, hurt by the tit-for-tat trade battle between the two biggest economies in the world, with industrial assets taking it on the chin the most amid the tariff spat. However, over the week, the metal registered a weekly rise of about 1.9%.
In exchange-traded funds, the SPDR Gold Shares ETF GLD, +0.47% fell 0.2%, breaking from gold futures. The iShares Silver Trust SLV, -0.13% fell 0.6%, while the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners GDX, +0.46% fell 0.5%.
Among other metals, July platinum PLN8, +0.58% rose $2.20, or 0.2%, to $914.10 an ounce. Platinum, however, has shed 2.8% over the past week.
June palladium PAM8, -0.18% fell $4,95, or 0.5%, to $895.15 an ounce. For the week, the metal has tumbled 7.1%, representing its worst weekly drop since the week ended Feb. 9, when it fell 7.8%.
"Last year's uptrend has reversed and palladium prices are down more than 20% from their January high," Julius Baer analysts said in a note. "We see them better aligned with a softer global car market and shift our view to neutral."