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Corn advances in light trading before reports

Published: January 8, 2013 Comment on this article

Gold fell after the Federal Reserve released minutes of its December meeting last week showing that policymakers disagreed over how long to keep a bond-purchase program in place. Traders inferred that the Fed may end the program sooner than anticipated, meaning higher U.S. interest rates and a stronger dollar. That would also hurt gold, which investors buy as an alternative to the U.S. currency.

Trading in other metals was mixed.

March silver rose 38.30 cents to $30.4650. Platinum for April rose $26.90 to $1,583.20. March copper rose 0.6 cents to $3.6720 a pound and palladium for March delivery fell $2.15 to $667.85 an ounce.

Benchmark oil fell 4 cents to finish at $93.15 a barrel in New York. The price rose close to $94 early in the day but slumped later.

In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline rose 1.7 cents to end at $2.7944 a gallon, heating oil rose 2.64 cents to finish at $3.0585 a gallon and natural gas for February fell 4.8 cents to end at $3.2180 a gallon.

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