Commodities

Gold prices touched their highest intraday level of the year on Friday, briefly topping $1,300 an ounce before pulling back to settle lower for the session. "The selloff is unusual as there was no data or market news to account for the [roughly] $15 drop" from the day's highs, said Mark O'Byrne, research director at GoldCore. "Risk aversion has eased with stocks eking out small gains and some traders may have decided to take profits at the $1,300 level." December gold fell 80 cents, or less than 0.1%, to settle at $1,291.60 an ounce after trading as high as $1,306.90. For the week, it fell 0.2%.

Palladium has touched their highest levels in more than 16 years, keeping it on track to score their largest yearly gain in seven years.

Baker Hughes on Friday reported that the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil fell by 5 to 763 rigs this week. The total active U.S. rig count, which includes oil and natural-gas rigs, also declined by 3 to 946, according to Baker Hughes. Oil prices added a bit more to earlier gains, with September West Texas Intermediate crude up $1.34, or 2.9%, for the session at $48.43 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It traded at $48.38 before the data.

Oil turned decidedly higher in Friday trading to touch fresh session highs, with prices looking to recoup some of the week's losses ahead of the expiration on Tuesday of the September futures contracts for West Texas Intermediate oil. September WTI crude rose 54 cents, or 1.2%, to trade at $47.63 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading as low as $46.78. October Brent crude traded at $52.18 a barrel, up $1.15, or 2.3%. WTI was still trading lower for the week, set to lose 2.1%, but Brent turned up about 0.1% for the week.

Calpine Corp. shares shot up more than 9% in after-hours trading late Thursday after a Wall Street Journal report that Energy Capital Partners is closing in on a $17 billion deal to acquire it. Energy Capital, a private-equity firm specializing in energy infrastructure, would pay $15.25 a share for the power-generating company, sources told the Journal, which would value Calpine at $5.5 billion. Including debt, the deal would be valued at about $17 billion, the Journal said, and may be announced as soon as Friday. Calpine is known mostly for its natural-gas power plants, and provides power for about 6.5 million residential customers across the U.S.

The SPDR Energy Select Sector exchange-traded fund fell 1.4% Thursday to close at a 16-month low, enough to kick off a new bear market. Many market participants define a bear market as a decline of 20% or more from a bull market peak. And the ETF tracking the energy sector (XLF), which is one of the S&P 500's 11 key sectors, has now lost 20.3% since closing at a bull-market peak of $77.83 on Dec. 13, 2016, which at the time was an 18-month high. Of the XLE's 32 components, 15 have tumbled more than 20% year to date, and 11 of lost more than 30%. The last bear market for the XLE had ended on March 7, 2016, when the XLE closed 20.5% above its previous bear market low of $51.77 on Jan. 20, 2016. On Thursday, 30 of the XLE's components closed lower, with shares of Marathon Oil Corp. down 3.3% to pace the decliners. Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s stock slumped 3.0%, and was the most active component with 36 million shares traded. The XLE's losses Thursday come a rally in oil prices, as September crude oil futures settled up 0.7%.

Oil prices log a gain after posting losses over the past three sessions, as traders continue to weigh data showing the biggest weekly fall in U.S. crude supplies in 11 months, but also the highest total domestic production level in more than two years.

Gold prices could soon trade well above $1,300 an ounce, and it won’t be just because of investor jitters driven by President Donald Trump.