Gold Strugles for Direction
2025-11-06 16:28
By
Felipe Alarcon
1 min. read
Gold prices hovered around $3,980 per ounce on Thursday, loosely extending gains from the previous session, as a fragile US labour picture raised the odds of Federal Reserve easing and lowered the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset like bullion.
October’s private payrolls showed a modest 42,000 gain but that came alongside a surge in announced job cuts that reached the largest October tally in more than two decades, a mix that tilts the near-term data story toward softer payroll momentum amid the ongoing US government shutdown has amplified the importance of private data and political risk.
However the recent Supreme Court signals on tariffs and the prospect of reduced trade frictions have trimmed a separate source of safe haven demand and compressed risk premia that otherwise would have inflated bullion further, so gold’s path will depend on whether the labour backdrop continues to erode Fed hawkishness enough to outweigh lower risk premia.