Gold Price Drops $7.50; Dow Up 12.58 : Market Overview
A new selling wave pushed gold to its lowest level in nearly five months Monday, anticipating low August consumer inflation numbers due to be released today.
* Stocks finished mixed, with industrial issues advancing while health care and technology stocks were mostly lower. Bond yields were little changed.
Commodities
The gold bashing that began a week ago resumed in earnest Monday, as traders focused on the lack of inflationary expectations in the U.S. economy.
Gold futures for current delivery tumbled $7.50 to $342.70 an ounce on New York’s Commodity Exchange, the lowest since mid-April. Other metals also plunged. Silver futures sank 16 cents to $3.91 an ounce. Platinum lost $3.10 to $352.60.
Meanwhile, a slight uptick in oil prices failed to help the metals. Light, sweet crude for October delivery added 19 cents to $16.95 a barrel on the New York Merc.
Other Markets
Stocks had trouble following through on Friday’s rally.
The Dow industrials finished with a gain of 12.58 points at 3,634.21, but winners barely outnumbered losers on the New York Stock Exchange.
Among broader indexes, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index inched up 0.34 point to 462.06, while the NASDAQ composite index fell 3.99 points to 740.32.
Traders focused positively on entertainment issues in the wake of the Paramount Communications-Viacom merger announcement.
Meanwhile, health care issues were broadly lower as new details of the Clinton Administration’s health-care reform plan were made public.
Among the market highlights:
* Paramount soared 3 3/8 to 64 1/2 on the merger news, while Viacom’s Class B shares fell 2 5/8 to 56 3/4. Among other entertainment issues, CBS gained 2 to 263, King World jumped 1 3/4 to 40 1/2, Disney added 3/4 to 40 3/4, Time Warner rose 1/2 to 42 3/4 and Turner Broadcasting A shares jumped 7/8 to 26 1/2.
* Industrial stocks helping the Dow index higher included DuPont, up 1 5/8 to 49 1/2 on word of a new restructuring; Kodak, up 1 to 61 1/2, and 3M Co., up 1 1/8 to 107 5/8.
In foreign markets, stocks ended higher in Tokyo on heavy index-linked buying and hopes for a new interest rate cut, sending the Nikkei average to a new 1993 record high of 21,148.11, up 330.13 points.
In Frankfurt, the DAX average finished up 11.13 points at 1,872.57. London’s FTSE-100 index eased 12.2 points to 3,024.8.
In Mexico City, the Bolsa index tumbled 30.28 points to 1,892.65 on new worries about the North American Free Trade Agreement’s prospects in Congress.
The yield on the U.S. Treasury’s main 30-year bond inched up to 5.88% from Friday’s 5.87%.
Shorter-term bond yields were mixed.
In dollar trading, the greenback rose against most major currencies in light trading as investors took profits and awaited fresh the U.S. data on consumer prices and retail sales for August.
The dollar gained on the Japanese yen, partly in anticipation of an interest rate cut in Japan and other measures to stimulate Japan’s economy and shrink the Japanese trade surplus.
The greenback finished in New York at 106.27 Japanese yen, up from 106.05 on Friday, and closed at 1.609 German marks, up from 1.598.
Market Roundup, D10
