Gold saw a gain of just $2.29 an ounce to reach its session high of $1109.94 on Thursday, quickly falling in US trade to see a loss of $7.10 at $1100.55 shortly after new economic data was released showing a smaller-than-expected Trade Deficit for January.

The Gold Price in Dollars then recovered for most of the rest of trade as the currency slipped, ending unchanged on the day.

The Gold Price in Euros fell to €810 an ounce.

Silver dropped to see a loss of $0.16 as low as $16.83 before it also climbed back higher and ended near its late session high of $17.15 with a gain of 0.9%.

Platinum gained $21 to $1603, and copper rose a penny to about $3.37.

Gold Mining and silver equities fell about 1.5% in the first half hour of trade, but they soon rallied back to about unchanged and ended with about 1% gains on the day.

Oil remained near unchanged and the US Dollar index turned slightly lower after a spike in China's reported inflation rate sparked concerns over rising interest rates sooner, rather than later.

US Treasury bonds rose after Thursday's $13 billion 30-year note auction drew a yield of just 4.679% with a strong bid-to-cover ratio of 2.89. Again, it was mostly due to a surprising surge in demand from mysterious "direct bidders" – a group which include domestic money managers, and excludes foreign central banks.

Direct bidders bought 29.6% of the sale, the highest ratio since 2006 and sharply higher from the more recent average of 5.6%.

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P meantime ended at their highs of the session with modest gains on mixed economic data from around the globe.

Friday at 08:30 EST brings US Retail Sales data for February, expected to show a 0.2% drop. Excluding autos, sales are expected up 0.1%. At 09:55 comes Michigan Sentiment for March, expected at 74.0, and at 10:00 is the Business Inventories report for January, expected up 0.1%.

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

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