Gold, Silver Gain for the Week Despite Oil and Interest Rates Surging

GOLD PRICES jumped Friday afternoon in London, rising with silver as crude oil eased back from this week's dramatic jump but bond yields and interest rate expectations held onto their surge as fighting intensified in the Russia-Ukraine and US-Iran wars.

Reversing 1/3rd of yesterday's fall from sudden 2-week gold price highs, the precious metal today showed a weekly rise for only the 6th week in 21 since the Iran war began.

Silver meantime rose for the 7th week during the current Middle East conflict, reversing 75% of last week's dramatic 6.8% plunge to the lowest week-end finish since end-November.

Brent crude oil today eased back from Thursday's spike above $100 per barrel on the ICE derivatives exchange's September contract.

But borrowing costs in the bond market hit 2011 levels for Germany's 10-year Bund, 2007 levels for the USA's 30-year Treasury, and new record highs for Japan's 5-year JGB.

The odds of a rate rise at next Wednesday's July meeting of the US Federal Reserve have meantime jumped by more than 20 percentage points this week, market consensus says, putting the likelihood above 1-in-3 according to data from the CME derivatives exchange.

Year-end Fed Funds rate forecasts have set new lifetime highs.

Gold today rallied to $4065 per troy ounce at London's 3pm bullion-market auction, rising by 1.7% from last Friday's 8-month week-end low.

Silver prices had earlier fixed around $58.35 per troy ounce at midday, falling and then rising above that level as London trading closed.

US talks with Russia yesterday ended with the Kremlin's Sergei Lavrov telling Secretary of State Marco Rubio that continuing to sell US arms to Ukraine is "unacceptable".

Ukrainian drones today struck 3 more warehouses of Russia's 'Amazon-style' Wildberries e-commerce platform, while a Russian missile killed 10 people and injured 100 at a defence industry event near Kyiv.

Iran today hit targets in Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain and Iraq, while US military strikes killed 4 people in Ahvaz, western Iran.

Media reports say an attack by 25-30 Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank killed 4 Palestinians, while one settler was killed.

The Houthi rebel group in Yemen meantime denied it is blockading the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, only targeting "the Saudi side", while oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz past Iran fell to its lowest since May.