Precious Metals

Gold was essentially unchanged to the mid-point of the London session on Friday, after which it took off and moved sharply higher to late morning, poking above $933 before sliding through the end of the Comex, only to perk up again on the Globex and rise to a finish at $930.90/oz., up $5.20. For the week, gold tacked on 1.6%.

Platinum peaked in the far East, slumped to the New York open, staged a very tepid rally, then slid again to end near its intraday low at $1101, down $10. For the week, platinum shed 4%.

Silver was down from late Hong Kong trading to the New York open, climbed to its high for the day, of $14.15, in the late morning, then slowly keeled over through the Globex to close at $13.95, down 10 cents. For the week, silver was off a miniscule 3/10 of one percent. (Click here for charts)

It was a second straight day of minor change for the precious metals, with silver and platinum submitting losses, while gold somehow managed to eke out a modest finish in the green.

However, gold aficionados had to be satisfied with the results, given that the usual suspects were line up in opposition, with oil selling off and the dollar moving strongly against the euro.

Gold likely got a lift from declining equities.

“For gold and silver, we are going into a win-win situation,” said Ashraf Laidi, the chief market strategist at CMC Markets in London. “When we will have a retreat in the financials and the rest of the stocks, we will have some rotation into metals.”

In addition, “The core inflation number helped stabilize gold and helped gold up $930,” said George Gero, of RBC Capital Markets.

That could be meaningful heading into next week, according to Ralph Preston, of Heritage West Futures in San Diego, who predicted that, “A close above $930 could be explosive.”

Yet more positive statements came from Tom Pawlicki, of MF Global, who noted that, “Gold has been the object of affection for hedge funds and also has paid increasing attention to the dollar lately … That helps explain why gold has rallied both when stocks have risen and fallen.”

If the funds are moving back into the yellow metal, that bodes very well indeed.