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Gold dips as dollar offsets lift from risk aversion

LONDON - Gold remained near its lowest in nearly two weeks on Tuesday as a stronger dollar kept commodities under pressure, offsetting the lift to bullion from concern over the Irish debt crisis.

While gold often benefits from heightened investor aversion to riskier assets, it has been swept lower in the broad sell-off that has knocked copper, crude oil and grains, which have in turned suffered from mounting expectations for more monetary tightening in top raw materials consumer China.

Coupled with flows out of hard assets was a cooling towards bullion from some of the world’s best-known gold bulls.

The most recent quarterly securities filings showed George Soros cut his exposure to gold in the last quarter, along with Eric Mindich.

Spot gold fell to a session low of $1,355.15 an ounce and recovered to $1,359.90 an ounce by 1140 GMT, down from $1,360.09 the day before. U.S. gold futures fell 0.7 percent to $1,358.90 an ounce.

“Commodities generally are on the back foot at the moment ... everything feels a bit on hold. We’ve had a pretty volatile period over the last couple of weeks and things seem to have blown themselves out for the time being,” said Scotia Moccatta head of precious metals Simon Weeks.

“Gold is wrapped up in the commodities story, which is often the case in the short term and then it often recovers as a currency afterwards.”

Irish debt in focus

Euro zone finance ministers will try to find a way to end Ireland’s debt crisis on Tuesday, with Dublin resisting pressure to seek a state bailout by signalling that only its banks may need help.

The dollar is holding around six-week highs against the yen and the euro, driven by concern about Ireland’s spiralling debt service costs and rising U.S. Treasury yields.

But several analysts echoed the view that the current decline in gold prices would likely be temporary.

“Pressure on interest rates has in our view been one of the key drivers behind the latest precious metals rally,” said Credit Suisse in a note.

“However, we view the current pullback across the sector as temporary as we expect the fundamental backdrop to remain favorable.”

Gold priced in euros and Swiss francs was largely unchanged on the day but up in yen and sterling terms.

Speculation of more monetary tightening in China and other Asian countries also worried traders. South Korea’s central bank raised interest rates for the second time since the global crisis and signalled further tightening as it shifted its focus away from heavy fund inflows to rising inflation.

Traders in Asia said a decision by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to raise margin requirements for all four precious metals could lead to additional liquidation.

Spot silver was last at $25.45 an ounce, against $25.42 the day before, having risen earlier to a session peak at $25.85.

Platinum and palladium were both down on the day, in line with other industrial commodities, ahead of the release of Johnson Matthey’s closely-watched report of market balances and supply and demand outlooks for the two metals at 1300 GMT.

Platinum fell to $1,664.24 an ounce, down 0.4 percent on the day. Palladium was down 0.4 percent at $666.72.