Finance Brief: Gold steadies, oil eases, and Istanbul faces a bruising Monday open
Finance Brief: Gold steadies, oil eases, and Istanbul faces a bruising Monday open
Monday opened with a small sigh of relief after a rough Friday. Gold found buyers again and oil slipped, but the mood in Istanbul is still fragile after a sharp sell-off and a high-profile detention.
Spot gold traded around 3,904 dollars an ounce in Monday morning trade, up about 0.8 percent from Friday's close near 3,876 dollars. That bounce followed a 146-dollar fall on Friday, and gold futures for December settled the week near 3,899 dollars, down almost 3 percent on the week. Silver also recovered, trading near 50 dollars an ounce, up about 2 percent on Monday.
Brent crude eased in the Asia session, with January futures around 111.23 dollars a barrel, down about 2 percent, as traders read US President Donald Trump's recent tone on Tehran as leaning toward diplomacy ahead of the US midterm elections. That is a relief valve for importers, including Turkiye, but it sits on top of a Strait of Hormuz risk premium that has not gone away.
In Istanbul, the BIST 100 closed Friday, October 30, at 10,759.56 points, down 3.64 percent in a broad sell-off that took the index to a six-month low. The market opens Monday with the detention of Borsa Istanbul chief Korkmaz Enes Ergun on October 31 in a fund investigation hanging over sentiment, alongside the first interim fund payments of 29.3 billion lira to more than 235,000 investors on October 30.
Levels to watch: gold holding above 3,900 dollars would confirm the bounce is more than a dead-cat recovery, while a slip back toward Friday's lows would reopen the slide. For Brent, the test is whether diplomacy talk survives the week without a new Hormuz incident. For Istanbul, the test is whether Monday's open treats the detention as a contained governance story or as a reason to keep selling. A new shipping incident or a hawkish US statement would invalidate the relief read quickly.
Information only, not financial advice.
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