Gold slumps ahead of Trump’s budget proposal

On Monday, the yellow metal declined, drifting away from the $1,300 mark hit on the back of a dismal jobs report, while traders looked ahead to retail sales data as well as American leader’s 2020 budget proposal.

On the Comex exchange, April delivery gold futures rallied by 0.35% being worth $1,294.75 a troy ounce.

On Friday, the yellow metal briefly broke the psychological mark of $1,300 after the US Labor Department posted a 20,000-job leap in nonfarm payrolls in February, which is far fewer than the consensus estimate of 180,000. Gold failed to stay above that mark for the settlement and fell short of the mark again, with an intraday maximum of $1,299.15.

Financial markets will closely watch the latest outcome of American retail sales, generally anticipated to stand still after a suddenly steep dive at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is anticipated to come up with his 2020 budget proposal. It has been reported that US leader offers a 5% cut in non-defense spending and also requests an extra $8.6 billion to finance the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico.

In addition to this, market participants will also closely watch inflation figures after the US key financial institution vowed to be patient and wait for more data before increasing interest rates once again. Additionally, data on American consumer as well as producer prices are scheduled to be uncovered on respectively Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Saturday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told that the US major bank won’t hurry to change interest rates. Instead, it will proceed with monitoring the world’s economy.

Aside from that, silver futures went down by 0.30% trading at $15.303 a troy ounce.

Copper futures rallied by 0.19% concluding the trading session at $2.899 a pound.