Gold down on upbeat data
LONDON (Sept 26) Gold was down Thursday on a day replete with data, with the most-traded month of December losing $11.40 from previous settle to hit $1,324.80 on the Comex as of 11.40 am EST.
The weekly report on jobless claims – a staple of every market watcher’s Thursday – came first, showing a figure of 305,000, well below the 327,000 expected and the 310,000 recorded last week. As is typical on any sign of economic health, bullion reacted by edging down.
The release of the GDP revision for the year’s second quarter was released concurrent with the weekly jobless claims, and at 2.5 per cent was level with the figure for the first quarter, albeit .2 of a per cent lower than expected.
The pending home sales index, which also came out today, revealed that pending home sales in the US fell 1.6 per cent in August, information which propelled gold to make up some of its losses from early in the day, only to see prices fall slightly later.
This series of drops comes the session after gold broke a four-session losing streak to close higher than it opened, adding almost $20 to the metal's per-ounce price Wednesday on the back of continuing uncertainty relating to the U.S. debt ceiling.
LONDON (Sept 26) Bad news was good news for gold, with the yellow metal rising $19.90 over the course of the day to settle at $1,336.20 per ounce as Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew proffered the date of October 17 as the day on which Uncle Sam would reach his debt limit.
With any deal between the executive and Congress likely to come down to the last possible minute, gold may find itself the belle of the ball once again.
In other gold news, the lengths smugglers are willing to go to in order to bring gold to Indians in the wake of the imposition of curbs on the metal’s importation has become clear, with the apprehension by customs officials in Sri Lanka of two men prior to boarding a Mumbai-bound flight who were concealing 2 kilograms -- $100,000 worth -- of the precious metal inside their bodies. The men, who were caught as they went through an X-ray check before boarding their flight, each had 10 gold ‘biscuits’ of 100 grams secreted in his rectum, according to a spokesperson for Sri Lanka customs.
"They were easily spotted because they appeared to be in pain and could not walk properly," the spokesperson told AFP, adding that the amount was the largest Sri Lankan customs officials had ever found inside a human.
This wince-inducing attempt at avoiding importation taxes comes a matter of days after a similar ploy resulted in the detention of seven other smugglers attempting to bring gold they had swallowed into the subcontinent. Authorities are waiting for the contraband to exit the couriers, currently being held in custody at a hospital, with the aid of laxatives.
The two attempts come in the wake of the decision by the metal’s biggest customer globally to raise import charges on the metal in an attempt to stabilize the rupee. The price of gold in India has risen steeply since, leading to a new surge in attempts to bring the metal into the country using what was diplomatically described as “unconventional methods” in the summer when the measures designed to curb importation were first introduced.
