SBV to extend Gold auctions to narrow price gap

        Vietnam central bank's latest gold bullion auction witnessed some improvement as 40,000 taels of 37.5 grams each gold bars were sold, the highest volume yet.

The fifth auction held on Wednesday attracted more buyers as bidders, mostly jewelers and banks, paid VND43.3-43.31 million ($2,068) per tael.

The previous highest volume sold was around 26,000 taels in the last two auctions. SJC, Vietnam's largest gold trader, offered a tael at VND43.35 million.

The central bank has so far sold nearly 120,000 taels from the country's reserves in the auctions it started holding in late March The auctions began after jewelers were prohibited from producing gold bullion in last May.

Oil falls after IMF pares U.S. GDP estimate

                  Crude Oil futures are trading to the downside in the early part of Friday’s Asian session after being weighed by down yet another concerning data point. 

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for May delivery are off 0.11% at USD93.41 per barrel in Asian trading Friday, perhaps indicating that traders are not overly impressed with the U.S. weekly jobless claims report. 

In U.S. economic news out Thursday, initial claims for jobless benefits fell to 346,000 last week from 388,000 in the previous week. Economists expected a reading of 360,000 new claims. The less volatile four-week moving average rose to 358,000 from 355,000. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil consumer. 

What may be weighing on oil is the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook, in which it pared estimate for U.S. GDP growth this year to 1.7% from a previous estimate of 2%. The IMF also cut its estimate for global growth to 3.4% from 3.5%.