Gold eased on Wednesday as investors took profits a day after it hit record highs despite the dollar's strength, but sentiment improved on bullion's growing status as a destination for diversifying official reserves. Weakness in equities markets, resurfacing worries about the US and European banking sectors and expectations for US interest rates to remain low for some time are favouring gold as a safe-haven asset, analysts said.
Commodities markets, especially gold, are favoured by trend-following funds and news of India's central bank buying a large amount of gold from the International Monetary Fund was taken as reinforcing such bullish sentiment and keeping up the buying momentum.