Precious metals gain on Friday

Precious metals ended higher on Friday, 08 March 2013. Gold futures settled higher on Friday, defying price pressures from a sharply higher dollar and stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs growth.

Gold for April delivery added $1.80, or 0.1%, to settle at $1,576.90 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, prices saw a 0.3% gain. February had marked their fifth-straight monthly loss.

silver added to its gains for the week, with May silver up 14 cents, or 0.5%, to $28.95 an ounce, for a climb of 1.6% from a week ago.

Among the most important economic data expected for the day, the U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since Dec. 2008. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, fell to 7.7% from 7.9%. Market had expected the number of new jobs to rise by 160,000 and for the jobless rate to stay steady at 7.9%. The average weekly hours worked increased from 34.4 in January to 34.5 in February. Hourly earnings rose 0.2% after increasing only 0.1% in January. Impressively, the increase in hours, earnings, and payrolls caused aggregate wages to increase 0.7%.

Also, wholesale inventories increased 1.2% in January after rising an upwardly revised 0.1% (from -0.1%) in December. Market had expected wholesale inventories to increase 0.2%. Unfortunately, most of the gain was the result of a sharp drop in wholesale sales which led to more goods being left on the shelves. Wholesale sales fell 0.8% after holding flat in December.

The dollar index climbed on Friday shortly after the release of the jobs data. The index then retraced a part of its gains, but spiked higher once again after Fitch Ratings downgraded Italy's sovereign debt rating to 'BBB+' from 'A-' and assigned a negative outlook.

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