Gold dips on stronger dollar

Gold futures on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange dropped Friday on a stronger dollar, ending the week with a loss of 2.2 percent.

The most active gold contract for December delivery dropped 7.7 dollars, or 0.58 percent, to settle at 1,309.9 dollars per ounce.

Despite trading lower for most of the week, U.S. dollar went stronger on Friday, offering some support to gold.

The U.S. government has been shut down for four days. Due to the shutdown, the closely watched monthly U.S. employment report was not released Friday. But a merit of the shutdown is that people began to believe that the Federal Reserve may not decide to taper its bond-buying program at its next meeting later this month, which in turn curbed somehow the drop of gold.

Market analysts hold that speculative investors were main buyers on gold market in the past two days. In contrast, gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) reported sale of 5.7 tonnes of gold in the last two days.

The Financial Times reported late Thursday that Chinese support for gold may be fading.

Silver for December delivery slipped 3.4 cents, or 0.16 percent, to close at 21.752 dollars per ounce. Platinum for January delivery rose 14.7 dollars, or 1.07 percent, to close at 1,388 dollars per ounce.