By Virginia Harrison, MarketWatch
SYDNEY (MarketWatch) — Gold futures retreated in electronic trading on Thursday as part of a broad sell-off across commodity and equity markets, reversing gains from the previous day as risk appetite stayed weak.
Gold for August delivery GCQ2 -0.24% , which is the most-active contract, fell $1.90, or 0.1%, to $1,561.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange during Asian trading hours.
For the month, gold is trading down 6.2%.
The metal jumped 1% in Wednesday’s North American session, finding some technical support at around $1,530 an ounce.
But fears the situation in Europe was worsening prompted selling across equity and commodity markets during Asian trading on Thursday. Read more on Asian equity markets.
The ICE dollar index DXY -0.14% , which measures the dollar against a basket of major rivals, slipped slightly to 83.026 from 83.053 in late North American trade Wednesday.
But at its current level, the index is up more than 5.3% so far this month, which has hurt investment in dollar-priced commodities including metals of late.
Around the broader metals complex, July silver SIN2 -0.44% lost 19 cents, or 0.7%, to $27.79 an ounce.
July copper HGN2 -0.34% fell 2 cents, or nearly 0.6%, to $3.37 a pound.
July platinum PLN2 +0.09% fell $1.10, or 0.1%, to $1,400.10 an ounce, while as September palladium shed 25 cents to $606.25 an ounce.
Virginia Harrison is a MarketWatch reporter based in Sydney.
