Gold rises today... What is the impact of this on the weekly performance of the yellow metal?

Gold prices saw strong increases during the last trading session of the week on Friday, supported by growing market expectations regarding the continuation of the monetary easing cycle in the United States.

Despite inflation data being higher than expected—which might indicate that the U.S. Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at current levels for a longer period—the recent labor market data does not favor this possibility.

Official data showed that U.S. unemployment claims rose by 225,000 new applications for the week ending October 4, surpassing expectations which had indicated an increase of about 258,000 new claims. This may be attributed to mass migration from Florida before the impact of Hurricane Milton, according to Bloomberg.

This data contributed to boosting the upward momentum of gold prices, as markets perceive the U.S. labor market as weakening, which may lead the U.S. Federal Reserve to continue its interest rate reduction cycle in the November meeting. This could negatively impact the dollar and positively affect gold as one of the commodities priced in greenbacks.

Additionally, gold prices found support from comments made by Federal Reserve member Goolsbee today, as the American official urged against overreacting to inflation data, emphasizing that inflation is decreasing towards its target.

After the U.S. producer price index data came in higher than expected for September, gold trimmed its early gains; however, it maintained its upward movements against the backdrop of ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, which have boosted demand for gold as a safe haven. The Israeli entity has intensified its bombing of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and investors remain deeply concerned about the almost certain retaliation from the entity against Iran.

Current Gold Prices

In today's trading, spot gold prices rose by 0.67%, or about $17, to $2,647.47 per ounce. At the same time, December gold futures rose by approximately 1.03%, reaching $2,666.45 per ounce.

Weekly, with today's surge in gold prices, the precious metal is set to record a slight weekly loss as the end of the trading week approaches, with total declines in gold prices since the beginning of the week to date amounting to about 0.21%.