Bourse

Home page

Bourse

Gold futures hover near $1,110

29 December 2009 09:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku -APA-Economics. Gold futures ended slightly higher Monday after trading choppily in holiday-thinned markets, the Wall Street Journal reported.
February gold rose $3.10 to settle at $1,107.90 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Although the metal moved back and forth, the range for pit and electronic trading wasn’t particularly wide, from $1,102.10 to $1,114.50.
Ups and downs in gold are to be expected because trading is light with participants out for the holidays, said Dan Cook, senior market analyst with IG Markets.
Trading tends to thin out between Christmas and New Year’s. Markets in the U.K. were also closed Monday for Boxing Day.
The metal was stabilizing after holding support around $1,075 last week, said Ralph Preston, senior market analyst with Heritage West Financial.
Gold was near steady with the U.S. dollar, also near unchanged in thin trading. Shortly after the metal closed, the ICE Futures U.S. Dollar Index was down 0.102 point at 77.582 points.
"The dollar’s not really doing much," noted Daniel Pavilonis, senior market strategist with Lind-Waldock.
Dollar-denominated assets like gold often trade inversely to the greenback because dollar movements make them more or less expensive for those using other currencies.
Also, gold’s pullback since its record high above $1,200 earlier this month has come as investors have bought the dollar amid growing confidence in a U.S. economic recovery and expectations the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates earlier than previously expected next year. That would curtail the easy money policy of near-zero interest rates that helped boost gold this year.
On Monday, silver futures settled higher along with gold prices. Comex March silver gained 12 cents to settle at $17.56 an ounce.
Meanwhile, Nymex April platinum gained $15.70 to settle at $1,489.70 an ounce while March palladium on the exchange lost 80 cents to settle at $388.85 an ounce.
Platinum futures continued to gain Monday after last week’s news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had approved an application by ETF Securities to list platinum and palladium exchange-traded funds.
Some profit-taking brought the metal off its highs Monday, a trader said. After getting a boost from the news last week, palladium is now holding steady, the trader said.