U.S. gold traded nearly flat at $1,716 on Monday morning

Gold traded steady on Monday, after last week’s European Union summit agreed on deeper economic integration but fell short of a convincing plan to address the two-year-old euro zone debt crisis.

FUNDAMENTALS
* Spot gold was little changed at $1,711.49 an ounce by 0022 GMT, struggling to stay above the 50-day average of $1,709.46.
* U.S. gold traded nearly flat at $1,716.
* Europe secured a historic agreement to draft a new treaty for deeper economic integration in the euro zone on Friday, but Britain, the region’s third largest economy, refused to join the other 26 countries in a fiscal union and was left isolated.

* Equities rallied after the summit, but the post-summit euphoria may evaporate soon as investors remain sceptical whether the agreement will cure the debt crisis.
* Investors will watch the results of Italian and Spanish bond sales this week, and yields are expected to rise as theEuropean Central Bank dashed expectations for more bond buying.

* An index of consumer sentiment rose to its highest in six months in early December and the trade deficit narrowed in October in the latest signs that the U.S. economy’s health is slowly improving.
* Money managers, including hedge funds and other large speculators, raised their bullish bets in gold for the first time in three weeks, as the price of bullion jumped to a near two-week high above $1,760 an ounce. – Reuters

Posted by VBN on Dec 12 2011. Filed under Gold. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry