Daily Gold Update

Source:Bill Musgrave, American Gold Exchange

Austin— Gold slumped 1.9% to close under $1,280 after the FBI cleared Hillary Clinton in its newest probe of her emails, fueling risk appetite and diminishing demand for safe-haven assets.

Nine days after explosively reopening the FBI's probe into Clinton's use of a private email server, Director James Comey announced that the batch of newly-discovered emails afforded no grounds for charges. The news was seen to boost Clinton's chances in tomorrow's U.S. presidential election.

Gold had risen 2.2% last week, posting its fourth consecutive weekly win, in large part on flights to safety after Comeys' bombshell announcement of a new probe appeared to help Donald Trump's position in pre-election polling.

Wall Street jumped on today's news, with the Dow gaining 1.8% and the S&P 500 nearly 2%. Clinton's election is generally considered to be less risky than Trump's, if only because her policies are more widely understood and the markets dislike uncertainty.

U.S. equity markets had dropped for nine straight sessions through Friday, the longest losing streak since the early 1980s, as investors flocked to the safety of gold, Treasury bonds, and safe-haven currencies like the Japanese yen and Swiss franc.

The dollar added 0.4% against a basket of rivals and jumped 1.4% against the yen as risk-off sentiment receded. A stronger dollar typically weighs on gold and other commodities priced in dollars by making them more expensive overseas.

The other precious metals were mostly lower, with silver and platinum dropping 1.2% and 0.3%, respectively. Outlier palladium surged 5.1% after Ford reported a 14% jump in year-over-year sales to China last month. Palladium is widely used in automotive catalytic converters.

At the Comex close: December gold slumped or 1.9%, to settle at $1,279.40; December silver lost 22 cents to $18.15; January platinum slipped $3.10 to $1,001.40; and December palladium surged $31.60 to $656.40 an ounce.