Gold advanced for the first time in three days in Asia as concern at the slowing global economy and the metal’s dip below $900 an ounce lured buyers. Bullion gained as investors sought haven assets on speculation President Barack Obama’s stimulus package won’t lead to a rapid recovery by the U.S. economy. Holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest exchange-traded fund backed by bullion, climbed to a record 881.87 metric tons yesterday. “Gold is consolidating around the $900 an ounce level,” Michael Jansen, an analyst at JPMorgan Securities Ltd. in London, said in an e-mail. Speculators are “quite long, both in terms of futures and in the form of ETFs,” he said. Bullion for immediate delivery added as much as 0.7 percent to $900.35 an ounce, and traded at $899.04 at 10:50 a.m. in Singapore. It has traded above $900 in each of the past 12 days and reached $929.70 on Jan. 30, the highest since Oct. 10. April delivery gold, the most actively traded contract, gained 0.8 percent to $900.10 in after-hours electronic trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold for December delivery dipped 0.2 percent to 2,652 yen a gram ($903 an ounce) on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange. Hedge fund managers and other large speculators increased their bets on rising Comex gold prices to a six-month high last week, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. Net-long positions, the difference between commitments to buy and sell the futures, rose 10 percent to 155,306 contracts in the week ended Feb. 3. Despite six gains in the past eight weeks, net-long positions are still well-below last year’s peak, Jansen said. That “indicates how little selling interest there is in the bullion market right now.” Among other precious metals for immediate delivery, silver rose 0.4 percent to $12.8850 an ounce, platinum gained 0.4 percent to $994.50 an ounce, and palladium jumped 1.6 percent to $210.75 an ounce.

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