Gold lost ground Tuesday, giving back a big chunk of the previous session’s haven-inspired gains in a bout of apparent profit-taking.
Gold for April delivery
GCJ20, -1.40%
on Comex fell $24.10, or 1.4%, to $1,652.50 an ounce, while March silver
SIH20, -2.79%
dropped 47.6 cents, or 2.5%, to $18.40 an ounce. Gold advanced 1.7% on Monday to a seven-year high as investors dumped global equities and jumped into traditional haven assets amid worries about the spread of COVID-19 outside of China.
Stock-index futures pointed to a modestly higher start for U.S. equities on Tuesday after the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA, -3.56%
and the S&P 500
SPX, -3.35%
fell more than 3% for their biggest one-day percentage decline in two years.
Gold “continued marching north yesterday, hitting resistance near $1,689, a territory last seen back in January 2013. Then it entered a corrective mode, which continued today as well,” said Charalambos Pissouros, senior market analyst at JFD Group, in a note.
Analysts said pressure on gold appeared to stem from profit-taking on recent gains. The most recent Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed a record high in net long speculative gold positions, noted Ipek Ozkardeskaya, analyst at Swissquote.
In other metals trade, March palladium
PAH20, +1.73%
rose 1.7% to $2,563.70 an ounce, while April platinum
PLJ20, -1.34%
dropped 1.6% to $958.80 an ounce.
March copper
HGH20, -0.02%
was down 0.1% at $2.574 a pound.
Source : MTV