South Africa’s latest labor unrest started with protests and violent clashes at Lonmin Plc’s (LMI) Marikana mine last month, including a police shooting that left 34 dead in late August. Heightening supply fears, the prospects for output coming back on line quickly are not good. That climb has come on the back of weeks of South African strikes and production cutbacks. The front-month and most-active contract, was up $34.20, or 2%, to settle at $1,713.70 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday. Silver XAG= fell to $16.80/16.86 from $16.85/16.91 an ounce, while spot palladium XPD= was up at $439/447 an ounce, higher than its Thursday close of 430.50/438.50 an ounce.Some analysts are calling for platinum futures prices beyond $1,750 an ounce by the end of the year, which would be a 2% increase over Friday’s settlement price. In other precious metals, gold futures for June delivery GCM8 on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange settled up 3.70 at $885.80 an ounce. cents an ounce to the spot London prices in Singapore, from 75 cents last week. In the physical market, steady purchases from jewellers in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam pushed up premiums for gold bars to 80 U.S. I would think that oil is driving everything, really,” said Leonard Kaplan, president of Prospector Asset Management at Evanston, Illinois. Is gold too cheap or is oil too expensive? One of the two is true. Spot gold XAU= hit a one-week high of $889.80 an ounce on a weaker dollar and record-high oil prices, but slipped as oil retreated.
The benchmark contract for April 2009 delivery rallied to 6,703 yen per gram, but still below a record of 7,427 yen hit on March 6. In other markets, the most active Tokyo platinum contract jumped by the daily 300 yen limit.
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