Gold Logs First Weekly Increase in Four Weeks

Palladium declined on Friday while gold, silver and platinum advanced. The metals posted weekly gains — sharp ones for platinum and palladium and modest ones for gold and silver. Gold’s weekly increase was its first in four weeks.

Gold for August delivery rose $1.10, or 0.06%, to settle at $1,777.80 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Gold futures edged up 0.5% this week following three straight weekly losses that had trimmed prices by a combined $136.30, or 7.2%. They are 6.2% lower on the year to date.

In looking ahead to next week, Kitco News offers the following forecasts via their Wall Street & Main Street surveys:

"Kitco’s gold price survey results showed that out of 13 participating analysts on the Wall Street side, 53.8% were bullish on prices next week. The other half of the votes were evenly split between the bearish and neutral camps, each gathering 23.1% of the votes.

A similar trend was seen on Main Street. Out of the 839 participating retail investors, 54.1% were bullish on prices next week, 24.2% were bearish, and 21.7% were neutral."

Elsewhere, silver for July delivery inched up 3.7 cents, or 0.1%, to close at $26.087 an ounce. Silver futures also traded 0.5% higher this week, after sinking 7.7% last week. They are down 1.2% on the year.

In other precious metals futures on Friday and for the week:

• July platinum rose $9.70, or 0.9%, to end at $1,103.60 an ounce, for a 6% weekly increase.

• Palladium for September delivery fell $6.70, or 0.3%, to $2,637.20 an ounce, but registered a 6.8% gain on the week.

Both are higher on the year so far with advances of 2.3% for platinum and 7.5% for palladium.

US Mint Bullion Sales in 2021

For a second straight week, the United States Mint published no bullion sales. Below is a sales breakdown of U.S. Mint bullion products with columns listing the number of coins sold during varying periods.