Gold fell around 0.5 percent in quiet trade on Monday as a Wall Street rally reduced the need for safe-haven buying and investors awaited this week's US Federal Reserve meeting for signals on the central bank's monetary stimulus plan. Better-than-expected US retail sales and jobs data recently has fuelled speculation that the Fed could announce a scaling back of its $85 billion monthly mortgage-bond buyback at the end of its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday.
"With very few clear choices left for monetary growth, US equities continue to show resilience. This has kept the bear alive in the precious metals market while physical demand remains firm," said Carlos Perez-Santalla at brokerage Marex Spectron. Spot gold was down 0.6 percent to $1,381.95 an ounce by 2:33 pm EDT (1833 GMT). US Comex gold for August delivery settled down $4.50 at $1,383.10, with trading volume at 65,000 lots versus its 30-day daily average of 217,000, preliminary Reuters data showed.
Volume was on track to hit its lowest daily level since April 1, Reuters data showed. Silver fell 1.1 percent to $21.80 an ounce. The CME Group's smaller silver contract, the physically delivered 1,000-ounce silver futures, begin trading on Monday, with total trading volume at 25 lots, according to CME's website. Turnover of the benchmark 5,000-ounce Comex silver futures was over 40,000 lots, below its 30-day average at 54,000, preliminary Reuters data showed. Among platinum group metals, platinum was down 1.1 percent to $1,429.74 and palladium dropped 2.3 percent to $712.47.
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