Commodities: Safe-haven gold down as market works through 'blockbuster' Thursday

Gold was heading lower as the market worked its way through 'blockbuster' Thursday, which featured the UK election, the ECB standing pat on interest rates and former FBI boss James Comey's testimony in the US.

At 15:23 BST, on Comex, gold was down 1.42% to $1274.8 an ounce. Silver had lost 1.5% to $17.36 an ounce, and copper rose 1.86% to 259.9 cents a pound.

Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at ThinkMarkets UK, said the precious metal was trading lower as traders had pretty much made up their mind that there was no smoking gun when it came to former FBI boss, James Comey.

"The risk of (President Trump’s) impeachment was something which everyone was worried about the most and it appears that is off the table now," said Aslam.

"Therefore, the major focus will be back to the fundamentals and what the fed will do with respect to their monetary policy."

He continued that the yellow metal might yet face higher volatility if an unexpected outcome of the UK election was returned.

"But, there won’t be that much of move coming out of this event because a Labour victory is not really going to harm the global picture, in fact we could see more softer Brexit which would reinforce the concept of integration.

"The tensions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar would remain on investors trading plan and this does represent the next major move for the gold price. So far the tensions are only escalating not easing and this is not a good sign when it comes to keeping the peace in the Middle East."

On London Metals Exchange, three-month industrial metals were mixed. Tin was down 1.83% and zinc lost 0.49%. Aluminum rose 0.26% and copper added 0.09%.

Nymex-priced West Texas Intermediate crude was up 0.52% to $45.96 a barrel. Intercontinental Exchange-traded Brent added 0.19% to $48.15 a barrel.