Gold was little changed in thin trade before the Christmas holiday with investors waiting for direction from the dollar and crude oil. Bullion has advanced more than 9 percent this month as the dollar has fallen 11 percent against the euro, increasing the appeal of the metal as an alternative investment. Crude oil has lost 21 percent this month. “In the physical market, trade’s extremely thin because of the Christmas and New Year holidays,” Shuji Sugata, research manager at Mitsubishi Corp. Futures & Securities Ltd. in Tokyo, said today by phone. Bullion for immediate delivery was 34 cents lower at $839.86 an ounce at 12:57 p.m. in Singapore after trading between $837.04 and $841.30. It reached a record $1,032.70 an ounce in March. Silver for immediate delivery rallied for the first time in five days, gaining 0.7 percent to $10.32 an ounce. February-delivery gold gained 0.2 percent to $839.950 an ounce in after-hours electronic trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. December-delivery gold on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange was down 0.5 percent at 2,441 yen per gram at 1:58 p.m. local time. December-delivery platinum fell 1.4 percent to 2,451 yen a gram. Immediate-delivery platinum was down 0.2 percent at $843 an ounce at 1 p.m. Singapore time. Platinum is used in pollution- control devices in cars and trucks. Crude oil for February delivery rose 0.2 percent to $39.04 a barrel after losing 2.3 percent yesterday. The dollar last traded at $1.3958 per euro from $1.3928 late in New York yesterday. Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., Japan’s two-largest carmakers, cut global production last month as the deepening recession and a credit crunch damped demand for new automobiles. Toyota’s output declined 27 percent to 589,505 vehicles in November, led by a 55 percent drop in Europe, the company said. The fall is the biggest in at least two decades, Spokeswoman Yasue Kato said today. Honda’s production dropped 10 percent to 326,176 vehicles, the company said separately.

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