Investing.com - Gold and the dollar are offsetting each other's strength as neither seem to have an overwhelming edge now.
Prices for bullion and gold futures diverged in a rare performance on Friday as investors tried to discern direction for the yellow metal amid conflicting data and fundamentals.
Spot gold, reflective of trades in bullion, was down $1.20, or 0.1%, at $1,291.52 an ounce by 1:50 PM ET (17:50 GMT).
Gold futures for June delivery, traded on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, settled the official session up $1.90, or 0.1%, at $1,295.20 per ounce and finished the week basically flat.
The divergence came as the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against six rival currencies, fell 0.23% to 96.58. The yield on the 10-Year Treasury, meanwhile, advanced 4.5 basis points to 2.55%.
Key stock indexes on Wall Street rose on runaway first-quarter earnings for JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and a multibillion-dollar energy takeover by Chevron (NYSE:CVX). Chevron announced a deal to buy Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE:APC) for $65 in cash and stock. That spurred confidence that the equities rally could go further despite a slowing economy.
The dollar and stocks are key contrarian trades to gold.
“Given the marked decline we expect in U.S. equities this year, we suspect that safe-haven assets will soon surge,” Capital Economics analysts said in a note.
“We think gold investment should be strong, particularly in the form of exchange-traded fund buying. As a result, we expect the price of gold to rally to $1,400 per ounce by end-2019.”
Yet, Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at TIAA Bank, told Reuters that the outlook for inflation was tame.
"The (U.S.-China) trade situation is getting resolved, and Brexit looks like it’s going to be pushed down the road," Gaffney said. "So right now investors don’t have any incentive to buy gold.”
Palladium rose after a two-day slide to remain the world's priciest traded metal.
Spot palladium was up $6.20, or 0.5%, at $1,375.80 an ounce. The silvery-white auto-catalyst metal, used for purifying gasoline emissions, traded some $300 above gold early last month before cutting that premium to less than $100-an-ounce lately.
Trades in other Comex metals as of 1:50 PM ET (17:50 GMT):
Palladium futures up $17.95, or 1.3%, at $1,350 per ounce.
Platinum futures up $4, or 0.5%, at $899.30 per ounce.
Silver futures up 10 cents, or 0.7%, at $14.97 per ounce.
Copper futures up 6 cents, or 2.1%, at $2.95 per pound.