Gold posted its biggest weekly gain since August as investors questioned how far a partial US-China trade deal goes toward resolving frictions that have shaken markets over the past year.
Palladium retreated from a record and copper slid from a seven-month high as stocks swung between gains and losses.
While China said it agreed to a “phase-one” trade pact and that the US will roll back tariffs in stages, markets gyrated as investors awaited more details on the accord.
Photo: Reuters
Bullion futures rose as much as 0.7 percent as the qualms helped support demand for the metal as a haven.
“There’s a little bit of an unknown here, which should be supportive of gold until we see something more concrete with the next part of the deal, and that’s pressuring copper as well,” RJ O’Brien & Associates LLC senior market strategist Bob Haberkorn said by telephone.
“It appears phase one is done, but it doesn’t appear that it’s going to meet expectations that the market had for the first phase of the deal,” he said. “The question is going to be how many phases and how long.”
Gold futures for February delivery rose 0.6 percent to settle at US$1,481.20 an ounce on the Comex in New York, after falling as much as 0.5 percent.
The metal is up 1.1 percent this week, the most since Aug. 9.
More trade between the two largest economies would be good news for base metals, many of which have been stuck in a rut for more than a year as trade tensions and weaker global manufacturing weighed on demand prospects.
Spot palladium slid 0.5 percent after reaching an all-time high OF US$1,982.01 an ounce earlier. Futures slipped from their record to fall back below US$1,900.
The metal had been on its way an unprecedented 16th straight gain after signs of a breakthrough in the US-China trade talks, fueling hopes for a rebound in the auto industry, palladium’s biggest consumer.
“The market is very much responding to news flow,” Bart Melek, head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, said by telephone from Toronto. “We should have a grain of salt handy when we digest this news.”
Comex copper for March delivery fell 0.6 percent to US$2.781 a pound, after rising as much as 1.2 percent on the heels of the announcement from China.
The metal — often considered a barometer of global growth — has advanced this month amid speculation around a trade deal, and on some tentatively better signals for the world economy.
Copper’s “anemic” supply growth would boost prices as demand recovers next year, Morgan Stanley said earlier this week.
The commodity, along with nickel and palladium, is among the best-placed to benefit from a phase-one deal, Citigroup Inc said in e-mailed comments late on Thursday.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”