Precious Metals Global report by Moneymaker Research

Gold recovered from lows near $1300 per ounce, riding on excellent buying after the keenly eyed US Nonfarm payrolls data witnessed a soft performance. The metal moved up from near two and half month lows and a quick rebound post nonfarm took the commodity near $1330 per ounce. MCX Gold futures also managed to recover from lows near Rs 30500 per 10 grams and edged up towards Rs 31K. Local futures have been witnessing a corrective movement after hitting highs above Rs 32300 per 10 grams in July this year. However, a good monsoon is likely to trigger some buying in retail markets in coming festive season.

The US Nonfarm payrolls rose by 151000 in August, slowing sharply from recent figures and pushing an expected increase in US interest rates toward the end of the year. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9% though. Average hourly wages rose 0.1% to $25.73. Hourly pay increased 2.4% from August 2015 to August 2016. Total employment gains for July and June, meanwhile, were barely changed. The government said 275,000 new jobs were created in July instead of 255,000.

Gold speculator and large futures traders added sharply to their gold bullish positions last week after trimming them for two weeks, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The non-commercial futures contracts of Comex gold futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +294609 contracts in the data reported through August 23th. This was a weekly change of 10758 contracts from the previous week’s total of +283851 net contracts that was registered on August 16th. The spec position is still highly bullish and within approximately 20,000 contracts of the year’s high point of +315,963 contracts. The current levels are the highest in nearly two months.