Gold Dips to $1,133.10/Ounce As Safe-haven Buying Slows

Gold
Gold dipped on Tuesday, December 20 after deadly incidents in Germany and Turkey failed to trigger safe-haven buying.Spot gold had slumped half a per cent to $1,133.10 an ounce by 0656 GMT, after closing up in the two previous sessions. Also, US gold futures dropped 0.7 per cent to $1,135.20 per ounce.

“The current economic scenario favours investments into assets offering higher yields,” said Mihir Kapadia, CEO of London-based Sun Global Investments Ltd.

“As the Fed is projecting three interest rate hikes in 2017, gold prices will remain turbulent and susceptible to rising interest rates and bond yields.

The economic data coming out of the US could push prices down. But, the physical demand has been phenomenal. So, it can’t get too much lower with the kind of demand we are seeing,” said Janie Simpson, managing director at ABC Bullion.

A bounce target at $1,153 per ounce has been temporarily aborted for spot gold as it seems to have lost momentum after breaking resistance at $1,137, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.

Holdings of the SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, fell 1.06 per cent to 828.10 tonnes on Monday. Holdings are down over 12 per cent since November.

Meanwhile, spot silver dipped 1.4 per cent to $15.74 an ounce. Platinum was 0.4-per cent lower at $912.70.

Palladium fell for the fifth straight session, down 0.9 per cent at $670.73. The metal touched a low of $670.22, its weakest since Nov. 14, Economic Times reports.