By Claudia Assis and William L. Watts, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Gold futures flip-flopped between small gains and losses Tuesday, slipping in and out of record territory, as remarks showing some acceptance for a short-term default for Greece eased concerns about the sovereign-debt crisis in Europe.
Gold for August delivery GC1Q -0.09% added 40 cents to $1,602.80 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. It had traded as high as $1,610.70 earlier, according to FactSet Research data.
In regular trading in New York on Monday, the precious metal settled at $1,602.40 an ounce, after touching an intraday record of $1,607.90 an ounce.
Gold has hit a string of nominal records in recent sessions. Monday was the 10th straight trading session of gains for the metal.
Key factors supporting gold include escalating European sovereign-debt uncertainty, with an emergency euro-area meeting scheduled for Thursday, as well as worries about U.S. debt, analysts at Barclays said in a note to clients.
Some respite from such worries came Tuesday after remarks by Ewald Nowotny, a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council.
Nowotny, the head of the Austrian central bank, told CNBC in a recorded interview that there are “some proposals that deal with a very short-lived default situation that would not really have major negative consequences.”
That contrasted with Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, who reiterated in a weekend interview that any form of default would result in the central bank refusing to accept Greek-government bonds as collateral for loans.
Silver also wavered. The September contract SI1U -0.24% rose less than 1 cent to trade at $40.33 an ounce.
