FINANCIAL MARKETS : COMMODITIES : Gold Futures Rise; Energy Prices Mixed

Gold futures prices advanced for the fifth straight day on New York’s Commodity Exchange in light trading stimulated by South African labor tensions and talk of buying interest from the Middle East.

On other commodity markets, coffee futures advanced while energy futures, livestock and meat futures and grain and soybean futures were mixed.

Trading in most markets featured late position-squaring ahead of the holiday, which tended to flatten out price changes.

Gold futures settled $3.30 to $3.50 higher, with the contract for delivery in July at $362.10 an ounce and the most-active August contract at $364.10.

Silver futures finished 1.6 cents to 2 cents higher in New York, with July at $4.919 an ounce.

In London, the price of rhodium, a little-known but environmentally important precious metal, soared by $1,000 to an all-time high of $7,000 an ounce Tuesday.

Similar in color to aluminum, it is a key ingredient in catalytic converters that change toxic car exhaust fumes into harmless gases.

The price explosion has been fired up this year by a severe supply shortage. Growing global pressure for legislation to reduce the level of nitric oxide from car exhausts is expected to keep demand for rhodium high, metal analysts said. And in a tight market, this will keep the price up.

“The metal has no foreseeable substitute and it is impossible to predict when the bubble is likely to burst,” said John Taylor, mining analyst with brokers James Capel.

Rhodium has rocketed in price from around $1,300 an ounce last November, when production problems arose at a new refinery owned by Rustenburg Platinum Holdings Ltd. in South Africa.

Some traders are predicting rhodium could rise to $10,000 on continued strong demand from the auto industry.