Gold stocks face a bit of a whacking this morning on the ASX after a sharp slide in the price of the metal overnight offset rises in the price of copper and iron ore (according to some measures).
Stocks like Newcrest, Dacian, Northern Star Resources and others in the gold mining group of listed companies face falls today because gold fell nearly 2% in New York to levels last seen in the gloom of January and February this year.
Traders on the overnight futures market sort of agreed – the ASX 200 futures fell around 5 points meaning a weak start to trading today – although it should be pointed out that the market has jumped 2.5% over the past three days and each day opened much more strongly than the overnight trading suggested.
Wall Street struggled all day – the Dow ending at a new high, the S&P 500 struggled back into gain territory in the final half hour of dealing, but Nasdaq was hit by bad news from a couple of big drug companies on major trials that failed to deliver good news.
The Dow ended up 0.3%, the S&P 500 edged up 0.08%, but the Nasdaq lost 0.11%.
Gold prices though grabbed the attention with the slide as the US dollar bounced higher in the wake of more good news from the economy, and the minutes from the latest US Fed Open Markets Committee meeting at the start of the month.
They revealed that the chances of a rate rise next month have moved closer, and greenback bulls liked that assessment.
The Aussie dollar retreated below the 74 US level gained on Wednesday. It was trading around 73.88 US cents around 8am in Asia.
Comex gold futures for December delivery was at $US1,190 an ounce in electronic trading after the release of Fed minutes. It had ended the regular trading session down $US21.90, or 1.8%, at $US1,189.30 an ounce, which marked the lowest close since early February, according to FactSet figures.
Comex December copper futures though rose 6.3 cents, or 2.5%, to $US2.608 a pound, while Comex December silver futures joined gold on the way down, falling 24.1 cents, or 1.5%, at $US16.391 an ounce.
Oil futures fell as Russia popped up as a very shy participant in the OPEC production cap deal now being hammered out for November 30 discussion and announcement.
January West Texas Intermediate crude fell 7 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $US47.96 a barrel in New York, while in London, Brent crude added 2 cents to $US49.14 a barrel.
That was despite a 1.3 million barre fall in US oil stocks (the announcement was brought forward a day because of Thanksgiving tonight, our time). And the weekly Baker Hughes report on oil drilling rig use was revealed a day earlier than normal and showed a rise of 3 to 474 rigs.
And the gains in the value of the greenback overnight added to the downward pressure on oil (like gold), but failed to impact copper.
