Gold Gives Back Ground After Early Surge But Closes Modestly Higher

(RTTNews) - After extending yesterday's surge early in the session, the price of gold gave back ground over the course of the trading day on Friday but still closed modestly higher.

Gold for December delivery rose $14.60 or 0.3 percent to $4,300.10 an ounce after reaching a seven-week intraday high of $4,355 an ounce. Largely reflecting the spike seen on Thursday, the price of gold surged 2.1 percent for the week.

The price of silver showed a more substantial pullback after reaching a new record intraday high, with silver for December delivery plunging $2.567 or 4.0 percent to $61.362 an ounce. Silver still soared by 5.0 percent for the week.

Gold initially continued to benefit from its appeal as a safe haven amid geopolitical concerns due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine and escalating tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela.

Buying interest waned over the course of the session, however, as comments by Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee partly offset some of the recent optimism about the outlook for interest rates.

Explaining his decision to vote against cutting interest rates at last week's Fed meeting in a post on the Chicago Fed website, Goolsbee said he is uneasy about "too heavily front-loading rate cuts and just assuming that inflation will be transitory."

"While I voted to lower rates at the September and October meetings, I believe we should have waited to get more data, especially about inflation, before lowering rates further," Goolsbee said.