Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Gold may fall for a second day in New York as investors sell the metal to cover losses in other assets and after Germany moved to help prevent Europe’s debt woes from worsening. Germany’s lower house of parliament approved the expansion of a bailout fund for debt-stricken euro-area nations to help contain the sovereign-debt crisis. Gold this week slipped below $1,600 an ounce for the first time since July as commodities fell to this year’s low and global equities traded near the lowest since July 2010. Gold’s drop “is still seemingly due to investors taking money off the table,” Marc Ground, an analyst at Standard Bank Plc, wrote in a report today. The German approval “should help ease some of the uncertainty, but is still a long way from a clear-cut solution to the problems facing the region.” Gold for December delivery fell $5.40, or 0.3 percent, to $1,612.70 an ounce by 8 a.m. on the Comex in New York. The metal earlier today fell as low as $1,585. Immediate-delivery gold was 0.1 percent higher at $1,610.72 in London. Gold is in the 11th year of a bull market, the longest winning streak since at least 1920 in London. Futures reached a record $1,923.70 on Sept. 6 as investors sought to diversify away from equities and some currencies. The metal is up 13 percent this year and 7.3 percent this quarter, as commodities head for their biggest quarterly slump since 2008. Recession Concern Germany’s lower house of parliament approved the expansion of the European bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, today in Berlin. The measure is set to be debated by the upper house, or Bundesrat, tomorrow. The euro-area economy will fall into recession during the next 12 months, according to about three-quarters of those questioned this week in a global poll of 1,031 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers. Forty percent see the 17-nation currency bloc losing at least one member in the next year and 53 percent said turmoil will worsen in a banking sector laden with government bonds. “The turmoil in Europe only seems to be getting worse,” Jonathan Barratt, managing director at Commodity Broking Services Pty., wrote in a report. “Growth in demand is coming from India and China.” Festival Season The slump in prices from a record will fuel demand during the festival season in India, the biggest buyer, according to Titan Industries Ltd., the nation’s biggest jewelry retailer. Premiums paid over the London spot price for gold bars in India were quoted at the highest level in more than a year, according to Phillip Futures analyst Ong Yi Ling. Premiums in Hong Kong have almost doubled to $2 to $3 per ounce, said Dick Poon, precious-metals trading manager at Heraeus Ltd. Gold exchange-traded-product holdings fell 2.7 metric tons to 2,218.4 tons yesterday, the lowest level in two months. Assets reached a record 2,298.4 tons on Aug. 8, Bloomberg data show. Silver for December delivery fell 0.5 percent to $29.995 an ounce. The metal is down 2.9 percent this year after touching a 31-year high of $49.845 on April 25. Platinum for January delivery slipped 0.4 percent to $1,531.70 an ounce, after earlier this week dropping to $1,478, the lowest since May 2010. Gold’s premium over platinum in London was at 5.5 percent, near the most since January 1992, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Platinum’s relative-strength index has fallen to about 24.4. A drop below 30 indicates a climb in prices may be imminent to some analysts who study technical charts. Wash-Out Platinum’s “recent fall to below $1,500 is in our opinion, fundamentally unsustainable and partly reflects the wash-out seen in the whole commodities sector,” Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said today in an e-mailed report. The metal is “heavily oversold and appears braced for a sharp rebound when the panic subsides.” Palladium for December delivery was down 1.9 percent at $622.95 an ounce. It fell to $605 earlier this week, the lowest level since October. --Editors: John Deane, Nicholas Larkin To contact the reporters for this story: Nicholas Larkin in London at nlarkin1@bloomberg.net; Glenys Sim in Singapore at gsim4@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net

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