Bullions shed part of prior session's gains

Profit taking among traders push prices lower

Gold futures settled with a loss on Wednesday, 23 October 2013 giving back a portion of the hefty gains notched in the wake of disappointing monthly U.S. jobs numbers that lifted prices to their highest close in almost five weeks a day earlier. Gold prices ended the U.S. day session moderately lower Wednesday with profit-taking which featured following recent gains. It was an uneventful day of trading in the U.S., as U.S. economic data failed to move markets.

December gold gave up $8.60, or 0.6%, to settle at $1,334 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

December silver shed 17 cents, or 0.8%, to $22.62 an ounce.

Rising short-term interest rates in China recently are starting to worry the market place a bit. Rising rates could be a harbinger to Chinese banking officials tightening monetary policy. That in turn would crimp demand coming from the world's second-largest economy, which is also a big importer of raw commodities. An overheating housing market in China was also in the news headlines just recently, which is also worrisome.

Tuesday's U.S. employment report bolstered notions the Federal Reserve will not be tapering its monthly bond-buying program, also called quantitative easing, any time soon. It will be at least the second quarter of 2014 before the Fed makes any significant changes in its monetary policy. That scenario is at least a temporary bullish factor for many markets, including stock indexes, the precious metals and the raw commodity sector.

On the economic front at Wall Street, the weekly MBA Mortgage Index slipped 0.6% to follow last week's uptick of 0.3%. Separately, the August Housing Price Index from the FHFA increased 0.3%, which followed an increase of 0.8% observed during the prior month.

Lastly, export prices, excluding agriculture, ticked up 0.3% in September after an unchanged prior reading. Excluding oil, import prices rose 0.1%, which followed last month's decline of 0.2%.

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