US gold futures rallied on Friday, closing just shy of Thursday's 16-year high, as the market tracked the euro's jump to a record high against the dollar, traders and analysts said. The euro hit an all-time high at $1.3458, extending the dollar's slip after a surprisingly soft US payrolls report in the morning, in a broad sell-off driven partly by stop-loss sell orders.
Some traders said the euro was also spurred by a report in a German newspaper citing a high-ranking US Treasury official as saying the United States would intervene to support the dollar only if the euro/dollar rate reached $1.45.
"People took the opportunity to sell more dollars and as they sold dollars gold goes higher," said Leonard Kaplan, president of Prospector Asset Management.
"Things look quite good for gold. We are basically almost at the target of $460, and I would think that $465-$480 is very possible."
In other precious metals, silver ended above $8 an ounce, in line with gold's rise, but platinum slipped from its prior eight-month peak.
Benchmark February delivery gold on the New York Mercantile Exchange's Comex division settled at $457.80 an ounce, up $5.50, after zigzagging from $450.10 to $458.20, and just missing the 16-year high reached Thursday at $458.70.
After the close, the exchange introduced its first Friday afternoon ACCESS electronic trading session, which it said was aimed at accommodating a growing marketplace for metals products. Comex gold and silver firmed slightly.
The new trading session runs on Fridays from 2 pm to 4:30 pm EST (1900 to 2130 GMT).
Gold briefly slumped lower in the morning but held above support at $450. Analysts had been expecting a technical correction after new highs almost daily in the past two weeks in a rally sparked by concerns about the falling dollar.
The dollar accelerated its slide Friday morning after a surprisingly soft 112,000 new US jobs were created in November, the Labour Department said -- the weakest figure since July and well below Wall Street expectations of 180,000.
The jobless rate was 5.4 percent, matching forecasts.
The data hurt the greenback as it cast doubt on the pace of the US economic recovery and the timing of Federal Reserve's interest rate increases, analysts said.
The euro was last at $1.3446.
Spot gold climbed to $455.45/6.20 from Thursday's late quote in New York at $449.70/0.40. Friday's afternoon fix in London was at $448.65.
Comex March silver rose 8.3 cents to end at $8.043 an ounce, moving between $7.84 and $8.09. Silver on Thursday hit an eight-month high at $8.235 and has peaked this year at $8.50, back in April.
Spot silver traded to $7.99/8.02, up from $7.87/90 previously. The London fix was at $7.83.
Platinum fell after selling that started overnight in Japan, said an analyst at a precious metals refiner.
"The market is still leveraged to the long side -- I'd call it maybe a bit overbought -- but I think it's going to hang around here. I think we're going to see pretty decent scale-down buying if we do trade lower."
January platinum lost $9.40 to $874.80 an ounce, after spiking to $887 on Thursday -- its highest since April. Spot platinum hit $868.00/872.00.
March palladium eased $2.30 to $206.75. Spot palladium was at $202/207.