Precious metals struggle to hold firm despite recovery

Precious metals have continued to struggle to hold firm despite recovering from the low ebb of last week, reports seen by business a.m. show.

The commodities returned lower after gains seen last week on traders’ booked profits spurred by the strength in the dollar index.

The staggering was attributed to lack of buying momentum which was earlier spurred by safe haven demand and geopolitical tensions which have subsided significantly in the near term.

They traded with a neutral bias as gold at 1313.50 dropped by 0.09 percent and silver by 0.30 percent to 16.47.

Speculators cut their net long positions in COMEX gold by 62,378 contracts to 51,985 contracts in the week to May 1, data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had shown on Friday.

Holdings of the world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, New York-based SPDR Gold shares also fell 0.17 percent to 864.13 tonnes also on Friday.

With the LME markets remaining closed on a bank holiday, base metals are taking cues from the Asian session and should track the CME Copper in the later session. Copper futures, trade on CME, are at 3.084, down 0.05 percent.

Zinc and nickel were higher by about a percent at 207.45 and 942.50 respectively as copper went up 0.56 percent to trade at 460.00.

The focus this week will be on macro-economic releases from China which is expected to show strong growth in industrial output and exports. Trade negotiations between the US-China should once again take the front seat and drive Copper and Nickel prices after talks failed last week.

The technical bias remains neutral as prices are expected to stay range bound in intraday.