© Reuters. Gold bars at a gold mine in South Africa (Reuters Photo).
(Reuters) – Gold prices stabilized above the $2,000 level again on Thursday, with the dollar and yields declining after weak US data indicated the economic effects of the cycle of interest rate hikes, reinforcing expectations that the Federal Reserve (the US central bank) will stop raising them soon.
The price rose 0.6 percent to $2,004.59 an ounce by 1400 GMT, after falling to a two-week low of $1,969.1 in the last session. And the American rose 0.4 percent to 2016 dollars.
And increased applications for unemployment benefits in the United States last week, indicating a gradual slowdown in the labor market, while a report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia revealed a larger-than-expected decline in factory activity in the states located on the American mid-Atlantic coast.
“We saw the disastrous (report) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, jobless claims continue to rise, so the economy is weaker in some parts than others,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA.
It pushed the data down 0.2 percent and benchmark Treasury yields also fell.
Markets expect by 86 percent a rate hike of 25 basis points in May. Economists polled by Reuters expected this to be the last increase and for the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates for the rest of 2023.
And for other precious metals, it rose in spot transactions by 0.2 percent, to $ 25.30 an ounce. Platinum rose 0.1 percent to $1,091.39 an ounce. And it settled at 1615.77 dollars an ounce.
(Prepared by Amira Zahran and Noha Zakaria for the Arabic Bulletin – Edited by Mahmoud Abdel-Gawad)
