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NEW YORK, June 28 (Reuters) - Central bank intervention to prop up the dollar pulled the rug out from under COMEX gold on Friday, upending early gains and sending futures to a six-week low as bulls turned tail en masse. Much of the capitulation came suddenly before the close, which left August gold <GCQ2> at $313.90 an ounce, down $5.70, or 1.8 percent. It managed an equally head-jerking bounce off $310.50, its lowest since May 16, in the final moments. Spot gold <XAU=> fell to $314.00/5.00 from Thursday's $319.00/50 close. Friday's late fix by London bullion dealers was $318.50. Gold was also a victim of investor outflows back into the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 53 points in the afternoon, despite news that Xerox Corp. would restate five years of results to reclassify more than $6 billion in revenues in the second accounting debacle absorbed by Wall Street this week. The dollar was firm against the yen after the Bank of Japan led the intervention to prevent a rising yen from choking off Japan's export-led recovery. The greenback failed to stay up against the euro, but still ended above the 28-month low hit at $0.9990 per euro in the morning. "We rallied because of the strength of the euro based on the Xerox situation -- and there are a few other things that make people feel there's no loss of confidence in U.S. equities due to all this thievery going on," said a floor broker. "Then intervention drove the dollar higher and that in turn drove gold lower." Gold, equal parts currency and commodity over the years, has correlated tightly with the euro this year, reaching 2-1/2 year highs early this month above $330 an ounce. Stock market jitters compounded the interest in gold as a store of value, amid worries about the fragile economic recovery, terrorism and corporate book cooking in the wake of the collapse of Enron Corp. Estimated final volume was a busy 45,000 contracts, almost half of which came in the last few minutes of trade. "It took out $316 with stops below that level and just hammered the market on those stops," said David Meger, analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago. $310 was the obvious point of the movement but when we said that we weren't expecting to get that in the next three minutes." The long position on the COMEX has been a growing impediment as gold ran out of new buyers. The CFTC Commitments of Traders report released after the close Friday showed the net speculative long on the COMEX contracted to 37,967 contracts as of Tuesday from last week's 41,241 lots. July silver <0#SI:> fell 4.3 cents to $4.833 an ounce in a narrow $4.89-$4.825 range. Spot silver <XAG=> was last at $4.82/84, off from $4.86/88 late Thursday. It fixed at $4.87. The net speculative long in silver fell to 39,164 contracts from 44,655 the previous week. NYMEX July platinum <0#PL:> slipped $2.70 to $537.30 an ounce. Spot platinum <XPT=> closed at $535/540. September palladium <0#PA:> rose $1.80 to $318.80, steadying above Thursday's contract low at $314 an ounce. Spot palladium <XPD=> fetched $316/326. ((Alden Bentley, New York Commodity Desk, 646 223 6041, nyc.commods.newsroom@reuters.com)) (C) Reuters 2002. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
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