Gold Retreats But Manages To Claim Near 13-Month Highs

Andy Parker
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Gold Retreats But Manages To Claim Near 13-Month Highs

After retreating earlier in the day, Gold Futures for April delivery recovered to Friday’s closing level. The commodity was seen trading at $1,271, maintaining its 13-month highs.

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Fed speeches

Market makers are anxiously waiting for a set of speeches from Federal Reserve officials to gauge the future trajectory of interest rate hikes and their probable impact on the yellow metal.

The rally in gold prices on Friday came before the release of U.S. nonfarm payrolls data. New jobs rose by 242,000 last month, underlining the fact that the U.S. economy is resilient, which may be conducive for interest rate hikes by the Fed during the year. Gold prices have seen a surge of roughly 18% in 2016 as investors’ appetite for the precious metals rose on the back of global market volatility and uncertainty regarding future inflation.

Sandstorm Amends Agreement

Among the gold mining companies, Sandstorm Gold Ltd (NYSEMKT:SAND) has reported that it has revised its metal credit purchase agreement with Entree Gold Inc (NYSEMKT:EGI). As per the amended agreement, Sandstorm has trimmed the amount of metal credits that it has contracted to purchase from Entree by 17%. The agreement came to a conclusion after Entree paid a sum of $5.5 million in cash and 5.1 million in shares to Sandstorm.

Meanwhile, Entree has announced a change of Chief Financial Officer. It noted that the present CFO, Bruce Colwill, will leave his position on March 22, 2016, and the company has already started looking for an appropriate successor for the position.

The SPDR Gold Trust (ETF) (NYSEARCA:GLD) exchange traded gold fund, added 0.89% to $121.61 during the afterhours. This while the iShares Gold Trust (NYSEARCA:IAU) has suspended the issuance of new shares due to high demand last week.

Among other metals, Silver Futures for March delivery rose by as much as 0.22% to $15.715. However, Copper Futures for May delivery slid 0.15% to $2.271 as investors digested the inputs of the China’s five-year economic plan.