SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Gold futures fell on Monday, marking their fourth loss in five trading sessions, as a stronger dollar and continued outflows from exchange-traded funds helped fuel a pullback in the wake of a strong rally late last week.
The market also saw pressure after the South China Morning Post quoted billionaire George Soros as saying that gold disappointed the public as the euro was close to collapsing in the last year and was “destroyed as a safe haven. But Soros also said that he expects central banks to continue to buy the metal.
Gold for June delivery GCM3 -0.06% fell $3.40, or 0.2%, to settle at $1,572.50 on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gold finished Friday’s session up $23.50, or 1.5%, at $1,575.90 an ounce after the U.S. Labor Department said the economy created 88,000 new jobs in March. That result was sharply lower than the 190,000 new jobs economists polled by MarketWatch had expected.
“In the short term, expect a lot of volatility in gold prices as investors try to figure out whether to remain upbeat about the U.S. economy,” said Edmund Moy, chief strategist for gold-backed IRA provider Morgan Gold.
But even if the U.S is doing poorly, investors are comparing it to alternatives like the European Union, said Moy, who is also a former director for the U.S. Mint.
The market also looked at the South China Morning Post’s published the transcript of a recent interview with Soros in Hong Kong, who offered conflicting views on gold.
On Monday, he was quoted as saying that gold went down when the euro was close to collapsing in the past year because people needed to sell something — so they sold gold.
“But central banks will continue to buy them, so I don’t expect gold to go down,” Soros said, according to the transcript.
Gene Arensberg, editor of the Got Gold Report, pointed out that Soros’s quote was in the past tense, regarding the euro crisis. “In a bull market, the headline would have been his comment that central banks will continue to buy it.”
For now, a climb in the dollar DXY -0.26% against most of its currency rivals weighed on dollar-denominated prices for gold, with strength in the greenback making the metal more expensive to holders of other currencies.
The yen fell against both the dollar and the euro as an ambitious bond-buying program got underway in Japan.
Arensberg said that “Japan is not the last country to devalue their currency. More are almost certainly to follow.”
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