After a four day losing streak, gold prices and the exchange traded funds that track them stabilized above their short-term supporting levels Friday. With little action to back speculation of further monetary easing, gold traders have refrained from taking on additional inflationary hedges.
SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) and iShares Gold Trust (NYSEArca: IAU) were both up 1% during trading Friday. Meanwhile, gold futures were were back above the $1,600 per ounce level. Both futures and the gold ETFs are hovering around their 50-day moving averages.
In both Europe and the U.S., the markets were looking for monetary stimulus to help prop their ailing economies, but ECB President Mario Draghi stated that any bond buying program would not come before September and the Fed’s latest policy statement did not provide new hopes for stimulus, reports Frank Tang for Reuters.
Additionally, the Friday jobs report revealed 163,000 new jobs added in July, above expectations of 95,000 additional jobs, stifling speculation of additional aid from the Fed to help bolster job creation through monetary policies.
“It appears that central banks now need more economic data for them to come out with more aggressive actions, and that’s disappointing for gold investors,” Phillip Streible, senior commodities broker at futures brokerage R.J. O’Brien, said in the Reuters article.
Still, gold gained ground Friday as the U.S. dollar weakened against the euro – dollar-denominated gold typically moves in the opposite direction to the U.S. dollar since it becomes cheaper for foreign investors.