Precious metals gain for second straight day

Gold registers weekly loss but silver gains

Bullion prices settled higher for the second-consecutive day on Friday, 13 February 2015 at Comex paring the precious metal's loss for the week. Gold on Thursday marked its first gain in three sessions, aided by a pullback for the U.S. dollar after a disappointing U.S. retail sales report and a jump in weekly jobless claims. Dollar weakness tends to make dollar-denominated commodity prices less expensive for holders of other currencies.

Gold for April delivery gained $6.40, or 0.5%, to settle at $1,227.10 an ounce on Comex. Prices based on the most-active contracts were down about 0.6% on the week.

March silver jumped 50 cents, or 3%, to end at $17.294 an ounce, for a weekly gain of around 3.6%.

At Wall Street, economic data was limited to Import/Export Prices and the advance reading of the Michigan Sentiment Index. Export prices, excluding agriculture, decreased 2.1% in January after decreasing 1.2% in the prior reading. Excluding oil, import prices fell 0.7%, which followed last month's 0.1% decline.

Separately, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index declined to 93.6 in the preliminary February reading from 98.1 in January while the consensus expected an increase to 98.3. Despite the large and unexpected decline, the sentiment level is the same as it was in December. The Current Conditions Index declined to 103.1 in February from 109.3 in January while the Expectations Index dropped to 87.5 from 91.0.

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