Gold traded flat on Monday, moving in tandem with equities and riskier assets, as investors focused on technical resistance and kept fretting about the eurozone debt crisis. Gold rose in early trade, then surrendered those gains after Germany and France warned Greece it will get no more bailout funds until it agrees with creditor banks on a bond swap.
The precious metal's moves mirrored the euro and S&P 500 US stock index, which also rose early and then gave up gains to trade nearly unchanged. Gold faces technical resistance at its 200-day moving average at $1,633 an ounce, after a late December sell-off that briefly sent it into a bear market, analysts said.
"There is so much bearishness in the market that gold prices would be much lower if it weren't for the Eurozone debt crisis and rising tensions between Iran and the western nations," said Carlos Perez-Santalla, precious metals broker at PVM Futures.
Fund selling ahead of expected index-rebalancing at the start of the new year also weighed, Perez-Santalla said. Spot gold was down 0.1 percent at $1,615.34 an ounce by 12:02 pm EST (1702 GMT). Last week, gold posted its biggest weekly gains in 5 weeks. US February gold futures for February delivery were up 20 cents an ounce at $1,617. Trading volume was slightly lower than average.
While rock-bottom interest rates and worries over debt and growth should support gold prices longer term, the precious metal's 10 percent drop in December has fed doubt about whether it can revisit last year's record high, analysts said. "Gold is finding better support, but it has been very rangebound since the start of the year," said Standard Bank analyst Walter de Wet.
In the short term, technical analysts are watching whether gold can retake the 200-day moving average - just above $1,633 an ounce - it fell through in mid-December. Adam Sarhan, CEO of Sarhan Capital, said gold's 200-day moving average, a support it had held for three years, has now become resistance. Bullion was likely to trade lower until it can break above that level, he added.
Among other precious metals, silver was up 1.1 percent at $29.04 an ounce, while platinum was up 1.2 percent at $1,415.50 an ounce and palladium was up 0.6 percent at $616.47 an ounce. Gold retained its historically unusual premium over platinum into a sixth month in January, after hitting parity with the white metal for the first time in 2-1/2 years in August. The gold/platinum ratio, or the number of platinum ounces needed to buy an ounce of gold, reached its highest in more than 25 years on Monday, at 1.16.
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