Gold slipped below the $1,000 mark on Thursday while oil prices made modest gains ahead of the latest US weekly inventories data.
Gold retreated to $986 a troy ounce, moving in a range between a low of $983.10 and a high of $996.35, after ending trading in New York on Wednesday at $991.65. Gold hovered around the $1,000 mark for much of Wednesday’s session but slipped as the dollar recovered.
In energy markets, crude oil prices found support from revised demand forecasts from the International Energy Agency. The energy watchdog of the west said global oil consumption would shrink less-than-previously expected this year because of strong consumption in China and the US.
In its latest monthly oil market report, the IEA forecast a drop of 1.9m b/d in global oil demand this year compared with the 2.3m b/d decline which it previously anticipated.
Opec’s decision to keep its production quota unchanged had been widely anticipated by the market and had little impact.
Traders’ attention turned to US inventories data due out later in the session which was expected to show a fall of 1.5m barrels in crude stocks last week, according to a poll of analysts by Reuters.
Gasoline inventories were seen falling 1.3m barrels while distillate stocks (including heating oil) were expected to rise 800,000 barrels.
Nymex October RBOB unleaded gasoline traded ½ cent lower at $1.8248 a gallon while Nymex October heating oil was fractionally firmer at $1.7962 a gallon.
Refinery utilisation was seen falling 0.3 percentage points to 86.9 per cent after a big jump of 3.1 percentage points in the previous week.
