Investing.com - Gold and copper prices dipped in Asia on Friday despite upbeat trade data out of China that showed the industrial metal on the upswing.
Gold for February delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 0.54% to $1,193.35 a troy oucne, while copper futures dropped 0.34% to $2.659 a pound.
In China, the trade balance came in at a surplus of $40.82 billion for December with exports down 6.1% and imports up 3.1%.
China imported 490,000 tonnes of un-wrought copper in December, up almost 30% from a month earlier, customs said on Friday, as fabricators and traders boosted purchases due to a weaker yuan and a favorable Shanghai-London arbitrage.
The buying from the world's top consumer of industrial metals brought the total for 2016 to a record 4.95 million tonnes, up 2.9% from a year earlier, the data showed.
Shipments of copper concentrate and ore imports last year also hit a record, up 28% at 16.96 million metric tons.
In sparse remarks, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Thursday said she has no major worries for the U.S. economy over the short term. The labor market is "strong," wage growth is "beginning to pick up," and inflation is a little below the Fed's 2% target "but pretty close," she told a group of economics teachers in Washington, D.C. on Thursday evening.
Overnight, gold prices rallied to a seven-week high on Thursday on dollar weakness
The Fed had indicated in December that at least three rate increases were in the offing for 2017, according to a forecast of interest rates from members of the central bank, known as the dot-plot.