Gold traded near a one-month high after jumping the most since March on Thursday as US-China tensions and a deepening global slowdown buoyed demand for haven assets.
Bullion surged 1.5 percent on Thursday and was heading for a run of three straight weekly gains after China likely fired missiles over Taiwan during military drills.
Beijing has responded aggressively after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan this week, the highest-ranking US politician to visit the nation in 25 years.
There were more signs that the fight to cool inflation would weigh on global growth. The Bank of England unleashed its biggest rate hike in 27 years as it warned the UK is heading for more than a year of recession, while Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester said that US interest rates needed to be raised above 4 percent.
Gold has risen about 6 percent from a low on July 20, benefiting from a weakening dollar and falling US bond yields. Traders will be looking at US nonfarm payrolls data that were to be released yesterday for clues on the US Federal Reserve’s tightening path.
The report was likely to show that hiring softened last month, Bloomberg Economics said.
“Safe-haven demand continues to support gold ahead of the non-farm payroll data,” said Gnanasekar Thiagarajan, director at Commtrendz Risk Management Services. “It could get a bit choppy ahead of the data. Central banks acknowledging recession is also underpinning sentiment for the precious metal, which was under pressure due to rising yields.”
Spot gold rose 0.1 percent to US$1,792.60 an ounce as of 11:57am in Singapore and was up 1.5 percent this week.
It climbed to US$1,794.97 on Thursday, the highest intraday level since July 5.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index edged higher. Silver, platinum and palladium advanced.
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],”