Far from the highs of the day gold, ‘dip’ 3.6% per week

With gold, but far from the highs of the day, gold closed on Friday in a session that ended an hour earlier due to Black Friday, with investors relocating their portfolios after the announcement of a new, possibly highly contagious, coronavirus strain. .

The variant B.1.1.529, which was named “Omicron” by the World Health Organization, has been detected in Botswana, in travelers visiting South Africa, in Hong Kong and in a traveler returning from Malawi to Israel.

The 27 member states of the European Union have also agreed to temporarily suspend flights to and from countries in southern Africa, as a precautionary measure against the new coronavirus mutation, the Slovenian EU Presidency announced on Friday afternoon.

The price of gold jumped initially on Friday, as stock markets in Asia and futures in the US suffered heavy losses. However, the precious metal lost most of its gains during the session, as some investors sold gold to generate cash in their portfolios.

The slight rise in gold was favored by recession of the dollar by 0.6%, while on a weekly basis the US currency gained 0.1%, as well as the fall of bonds, with the government 10 years of the USA to lose 11 basis points at 1.53%.

In this climate, the December delivery gold It added $ 1.20, or less than 0.1%, to $ 1,785.50 an ounce on Friday, hitting $ 1,816.30 intra-conference. On a weekly basis, the precious metal recorded losses of 3.6%.

As for the other metals, the December delivery silver fell 38.9 cents, or 1.6%, to $ 23,107 an ounce, while December delivery copper slipped 17.55 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $ 4.2835 a pound. On a weekly basis, silver “dipped” almost 7% and copper lost 2.7%.