Investing.com - Gold prices inched up Friday morning in Asia, heading towards a fourth straight weekly gain. Driving up demand for the safe-haven asset was a fall in Asian stock markets Friday morning despite a rebound in U.S. stocks overnight.
Gold futures for December delivery gained 0.16% to $1,234.5 per troy ounce by 11:49PM (03:49 GMT) on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The U.S. dollar index also edged up 0.22% to 96.4.
U.S. stocks bounced back on Thursday after a sell-off in the previous session that left some indexes in the red for the year. The gains Thursday were led by companies like Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX). The NASDAQ which closed up 2.95% while the Dow 30 and S&P 500 also rose 1.63% and 1.86% respectively.
“Quarterly reports are providing better-than-expected earnings, revenue and guidance. That triple play is instilling confidence in investors. We need other drivers to provide stability to the market after this meaningful sell-off we’ve seen in the last five weeks,” Peter Kenny, founder of Kenny’s Commentary LLC and independent market strategist, told Reuters.
Investors also expect another increase in interest rates in the U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said in his first speech on Thursday that higher interest rates can boost the economy.
But the rebound in U.S. markets failed to stimulate their Asian counterparts.
China’s Shanghai Composite slipped 0.21%, while Shenzhen Component rose 0.03%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index also dropped 0.88%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 went down 0.41% and South Korea’s KOSPI slid 1.93%.
Markets in the region are concerned about frictions between the U.S. and China as well as a slowdown in Chinese economic growth. Also weighing on investors is an Italian budget that the European Commission rejected.
These concerns have been driving investors out of Asian stocks and boosting demand for gold.
“The first, and the most important [worry] is that Fed tightening and fading fiscal stimulus will cause the U.S. economy to take a turn for the worse…the second is that China’s economy will continue to struggle. As we have been arguing for a while now, these worries are likely to get worse over the next 12 months or so,” analysts at economics consultancy firm Capital Economics told Reuters.