So much for a quiet Friday in late August.
After weeks of relative slumber, gold traders were rudely awoken to a surge in volume and volatility.
In a span of one minute, gold futures contracts equaling more than 2 million ounces traded — about 20 minutes before US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was to address a gathering of policy makers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The episode jolted the market after a measure of 60-day volatility on the metal touched the lowest since 2005.
Gold had been in quiet mode even amid political discord in Washington, concerns about rising US interest rates and tensions between the US and North Korea.
Yellen’s speech, which lacked clear rate cues, did little to calm the price swings and damped expectations of a rate hike this year.
The market is “bipolar,” RJO Futures LLC senior market strategist Bob Haberkorn said by telephone. “Between now and the end of the year, the story is going to be the Fed. The Fed was pretty hawkish coming into the year. Now it feels like they are backing away from September.”
Gold futures for December delivery on Friday rose about 0.5 percent to settle at US$1,296.50 per ounce on the Comex in New York, after falling as much as 0.8 percent and climbing 0.7 percent to briefly pierce the US$1,300 threshold. The contract is up 0.5 percent for the week.
After peaking at 21,256 gold futures contracts at 9:41am on Friday, trading fell to 6,683 contracts a minute later.
US Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan might have helped fuel the sharp move before Yellen’s speech by saying the central bank can afford to be patient on raising interest rates even while noting it should shrink the balance sheet soon.
“Kaplan was dovish and sent it higher,” Societe Generale AG analyst Robin Bhar said by telephone. “I don’t know if anyone then got wind of what Yellen was going to say, but it then dropped like a stone, and then, when she didn’t mention monetary policy, things started to stabilize again.”
“These are crazy markets, and very difficult to trade,” Bhar said of Friday’s gold moves. “The net result was extreme volatility.”
Base metals also fluctuated on Friday. Copper on the Comex settled unchanged at US$3.0565 per pound at 1:27pm in New York, after falling as much as 0.5 percent and rising 0.7 percent.
The metal posted a seventh weekly climb, the longest stretch of such gains since 2009.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”