Comex gold futures rebounded 0.32% in the past two days to end at $1,770.60 on Thursday. Both the S&P 500 index and the Euro Stoxx 50 index ended their four-day losing streaks with the US stock market staying flat and the European market rallying 1.24% on Thursday. After dropping 2.51%, the crude oil futures may look to rise about 2.4% this week. The Dollar Index rebounded 0.55% after selling off 0.75% last week.
The tone at the annual IMF-World Bank meeting in Tokyo does not seem to be very optimistic. The International Monetary Fund Managing Director Largarde expressed the viewthat global growth is much slower than expected and is not rising fast enough to create jobs for nations. However, the IMF is proposing to give more time to Greece to fulfill its fiscal consolidation in the next two years. Recently, Spain's long-term credit rating has been cut by Stand & Poor’s to BBB-, just one level above the junk status. Spain was not only suffering from economic contraction due to its banking problems and austerity measures, but also the unpredictable policy from the euro zone. In the meantime, the euro-zone industrial production in August, to be announced on Friday, is expected to contract by 0.4%, compared to a revised rise of 0.5% in July.
A small rebound in gold price this week was helped by better than expected US jobless claims, which fell by 30,000 to 339,000 during the week ending Oct. 6. The higher optimism towards the US economy helps commodities and equities to rebound. Gold price is still underpinned by strong demand from the gold-backed exchange-traded product side as well as traders raising their bets on gold futures and options to seven-month high as global central banks are cutting rates or engaging in money-printing.
The important events to watch would be the euro-zone August industrial production data on Friday, the second US Presidential debate and the September US industrial production data on Tuesday, the UK bank rate vote and the US September housing starts on Wednesday, the EU Summit talk on Thursday and the Q3 China GDP growth on Oct. 19.
