7th May 2017

Gold snapped back on Friday, but still finished the week down 3.2%, its steepest decline in some six months. The selloff was on account of several factors, including an impending June Fed rate hike (made all the more likely by a strong nonfarm payroll number out Friday), imploding crude oil markets and rising US equity markets. In addition, the gold headed into a weekend where early reports suggest that centrist Emmanuel Macron is expected to prevail over far-right candidate Marine LePen. On Friday, it was revealed that hackers broke into e-mail servers belonging to the two main French candidates and released tens of thousands of e-mails. However, the French media was surprisingly disciplined and has yet to release much of this correspondence, some of it apparently being fake. The important point to make here is that the incident did little to change the results of the vote.