Gold moves slightly lower heading into the European open

After another move higher during Wednesday's session gold is heading into today's European session 0.14% lower. Silver (-0.28%) is also slightly down but this pales in comparison to the 2.81% gain yesterday.

After a strong close on Wall Street yesterday the ASX (0.83%) and Nikkei 225 (2.38%) bounced back from some recent weakness. The Shanghai Composite did not move in the same vein as it closed -0.38% lower overnight.

FX markets were pretty dull, the biggest mover was NZD/USD which only moved 0.15% lower. The dollar index starts the session just under flat. In the rest of the commodities complex, copper is 0.39% down and spot WTI has moved 0.13% higher. Lastly, BTC/USD has bounced slightly to trade 1.32% in the black.

In terms of news, China's Global Times says Australia is to face serious consequences for unreasonable provocation against China.

The Canadian court is to adjourn Huawei's Meng Wanzhou extradition hearing to August.

Australian Q1 business confidence moved higher to hit 17 this is compared to the previous number of 14 as the nation moved slowly out of the pandemic.

Swiss watch exports (Y/Y) for March hit 37.2% (prev -0.3%) as the sector recovers from the pandemic.

Tokyo's Governor has asked the Japanese government to declare a state of emergency in the city. This comes after another rise in COVID 19 infections. Elsewhere in the Asian region, India's Coronavirus daily new cases surpassed 300k. India is really struggling to get to grips with the pandemic at the moment.

Joe Biden says 80% of Americans over the age of 65 will have had 1 shot of the vaccine by Thursday.

Italian PM Draghi is to unveil a €221bln programme to rebuild the Italian economy.

There was a magnitude 5.7 earthquake offshore Chile. It is not clear if any mining operations have been affected yet.

Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlight include the US Presidents Earth Day summit, ECB rate decision, U.S. initial jobless claims, existing home sales and comments from German Buba Vice President Buch and ECB's Lagarde.
 

By Rajan Dhall

For Kitco News

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