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.