The first trading session of the second quarter of 2012 kicked off Monday with gold futures slipping, according to Reuters.
The yellowish metal's performance followed that of crude oil as slippage in value to the U.S. dollar prevented bullion's larger losses.
"Recently prices have been driven strongly by speculative sentiment and it is not surprising to see those pullbacks," analyst Eugen Weinberg with Commerzbank told the news service. "But in the longer term, we still stay very confident that the upward trend in gold is still very constructive. We will continue to see buying on the dips, although on the demand side we had a couple of setbacks, especially from India with the strikes. But I think in the longer term, gold will perform even more like a currency, and be less dependent on the jewellery sector."
At 7:34 a.m. on Monday, gold futures fell 0.3 percent, a $5 loss to $1,666.90 per troy ounce.
The Economic Times reports the dollar index was just above its lowest rate in almost one month, which was touched late last week when the value of the shared currency of the European Union rallied.
