Silver edged down on Monday, lacking impetus to repeat last week's rally to its highest in more than 22 years as investors turned their attention to gold again.
Gold rebounded after volatile trading on Friday, which saw the metal rise to a three-week high of $570.50 before losing much of the gains to profit taking. Dealers watched Tokyo gold futures and crude oil prices for direction.
Spot silver eased to $10.16/10.19 an ounce from $10.19/10.22 late in New York on Friday, when speculation that US regulators would soon approve a silver-backed exchange-traded fund pushed up the price to $10.31 an ounce.
The EFTA's are designed to reflect closely the price of an underlying market or commodity, such as stock index or gold, and they trade like listed stocks on any exchange.
But the buying subsided before the weekend with no ruling from the US Securities and Exchange Commission or word from Barclays' Global Investors International, which filed for iShares Silver Trust in June.
"I do wonder about the validity of silver as an alternative investment vehicle," said Darren Heathcote, head of trading at N M Rothschild in Sydney. "But gold obviously had a big run-up late on Friday. It hit that sort of $570.
That looks to be the immediate resistance. A break of that will almost certainly, I think, see us test $575 again," he said. Spot gold rose to $566.00/566.90 an ounce from $564.90/565.80 late in New York, where it fell more than $3 an ounce.
The metal remains below a 25-year high of $574.60 an ounce hit on February 2. Benchmark gold futures on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange, currently February 2007, fell 12 yen per gram to 2,151 yen ($18.57), tracking declines in New York's Comex market.
Some dealers said gold would need fresh buying from Japanese investors to test new highs again but a recent rally in crude oil price would offer support. Persistent buying from Japanese retail investors had helped gold to its mullet-year highs.
Gold and other precious metals have rallied this year as investors diversified their assets due to global security concerns, worries about the outlook for the dollar and rising energy costs. Platinum fell to $1,055/1,060 from $1,057/1,061 an ounce in New York.
Sister metal palladium rose to $302/307 an ounce from $300/303.
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