Gold Cools After Theresa May Resignation, Looks to Pound for Clues
By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com - U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May finally resigned, pushing both U.S. gold futures and the dollar down on Friday as investors cut back on safe havens as the tenure of one Brexit's most controversial actors came to a close.
Bullion also slipped with gold futures in early trading before rebounding late in the day, as eurozone investors regained some of their risk appetite after May announced her June 7 departure following three years on the job.
Spot gold, reflective of trades in bullion, traded at $1,284.55 per ounce by 3:14 PM ET (19:14 GMT), up $1.10, or 1%, on the day.
Gold futures for June delivery, traded on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, settled down $1.80, or 0.1%, at $1,283.60 per ounce.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six currencies, settled down 0.25% to 97.477.
Both bullion and gold futures jumped nearly 1% on Thursday, their biggest rise in nearly two weeks as investors fleeing risk on fears of a heightened U.S.-China trade war embraced the yellow metal while dumping everything else from equities to oil.
Gold's direction in the coming week could be decided by May's replacement and whether the candidate will increase the chances of a no-deal Brexit, which would further weaken the pound and boost the yellow metal.
"(E)ssentially it will be a wait-and-see situation in the very short-term outlook and the pound could see short-lived spikes here and there," said Fawad Razaqzada, analyst at FOREX.com.
Elsewhere in metals, palladium rose, holding on to its mantle as the world's costliest traded metal.
Spot palladium jumped $25.61, or 2%, to $1,336.75 an ounce.
Trades in other Comex metals as of 3:14 PM ET (19:14 GMT):
Palladium futures up $21.85, or 1.7%, at $1,329.65 per ounce.
Platinum futures up $5.10, or 0.6%, at $804.60 per ounce.
Silver futures down 7 cents, or 0.5%, at $14.55 per ounce.
Copper futures up 2 cents, or 0.7%, at $2.70 per pound.
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