Disappointing US economic data had investors diving out of the dollar and into gold Thursday. US retail sales fell by 0.3% from November, the first fall in four months. Analysts had been expecting a rise of around 0.5%. Weekly US jobless figures were also worse than economists predicted, with the number of first time claimants rising by 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 440,000, compared to expectations of a rise of just 3,000.

Gold for February delivery rose $6.20 on the day to $1,143 an ounce, having initially opening lower and hitting an intra-day nadir of around $1,131. Additional support for the yellow stuff was provided by Goldman Sachs, which suggested the precious metal’s price could hit $1,365 this year, well above its all time high of $1,226.56 set in December of last year.

The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said that the Commission’s scheduled meeting in March to contemplate the introduction of position limits on metals futures and options contracts will concentrate on gold and silver contracts, prompting pundits to speculate that there may be some pre-emptive position building in the precious metals ahead of the meeting.

For the fourth day in succession oil price futures finished the day lower than they started it, as traders reacted to the US retail sales data and figures from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), which showed that stockpiles of crude oil rose 3.7m barrels to 331m barrels in the week ending 8 January. Industry pundits had been forecasting a rise of just 1.2m.

Inventories of natural gas were well above the five year average for stockpiles at this time of the year, EIA data revealed, while petrol stocks rose by 3.8m barrels to 223.5m barrels, topping forecasts of a gain of 1.2m barrels.

The February futures contract for the black stuff dipped 30 cents to $79.36 a barrel in New York trading. Further pressure was put on the oil price by a forecast from Barclays Capital which predicted the oil price was about to enter a down trend and could slide to the low seventies, near its 200-day average of $73.15 a barrel.

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