Gold price gains after Trump tests positive for coronavirus

London (Oct 2)  Spot gold was up 0.1% at $1,906.45 per ounce by 1206 GMT, having earlier hit a near two-week high of $1,916.76. U.S. gold futures eased by 0.2% to $1,912.20.

Bullion has gained 2.5% this week, heading for its biggest weekly percentage rise since early August. "It will now be a wait-and-see game where gold will attract some bids. It's certainly not a market where I see any appetite for selling gold," said Saxo Bank analyst Ole Hansen. Trump said in a tweet that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for the coronavirus. "It really is a question of how it's going to pan out - is it going to be a (UK Prime Minister) Boris Johnson-type illness or (Brazil President) Jair Bolsonaro one, come and gone without any real impact," Hansen added. European equities fell and U.S. futures sank on the news, which also drove investors to the safety of the dollar. "The only cautionary note will be gold's performance if the equity sell-off accelerates today," said Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst at OANDA. Investors often sell bullion to cover losses elsewhere.

Investors now await a U.S. non-farm payrolls report. Payrolls are expected to have risen by 850,000 in September, a Reuters survey shows. "If you get a really big beat, that could put some short-term pressure, but we're so far away from a clear and sustained labour market tightening that it's not going to set the overall trend for gold," said Marcus Garvey, strategist, Macquarie Group.

Elsewhere, silver rose 0.1% to $23.91 per ounce, platinum fell 1.5%, to $883.11 and palladium eased by about 0.4% to $2,305.80.

Reuters