By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Gold futures drifted mildly lower in electronic trading Thursday as concerns that differences among European leaders may prevent a resolution of the region’s debt crisis kept buyers away.
August futures of gold GCN2 -0.25% slipped $1.70, or 0.1%, to $1,576.70 an ounce in Tokyo afternoon hours. The metal futures moved in a tight range between $1,574.10 and $1,579.60.
The contract inched up $3.50 in a regular session at the Comex division of New York Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday.
“Gold trading volume has been low recently. This might be due to the summer doldrums or because without concrete improvement in the situation in the eurozone — or conversely greater dislocation — gold lacks clear near-term direction,” said James Steel, a bullion analyst at HSBC. “In this atmosphere, gold could drift lower.”
Steel noted HSBC house research that this week’s euro-zone summit to address the region’s stresses was unlikely to yield any “tangible progress,” as Germany continued to resist greater euro-zone debt-sharing without other countries ceding some degree of fiscal sovereignty to a central European authority. Read MarketWatch preview of the European summit.
The slippage in gold prices came even as the ICE dollar index DXY -0.31% , a measure of the greenback’s performance against a basket of six major global currencies, declined to 82.297 from 82.585 in North America late on Wednesday. Read more on currencies
Other metal futures advanced, however, on the dollar’s weakness.
July futures for silver SIN2 +0.01% and copper HGN2 +0.10% rose by 0.1% to $26.97 an ounce and by 0.2% to $3.36 per pound, respectively.
Platinum for delivery in the same month PLN2 +0.29% gained 0.2% to $1,412.60 an ounce. September palladium futures inched up 0.1% to $580.15 an ounce.
Varahabhotla Phani Kumar is a reporter in MarketWatch's Hong Kong bureau.
