Reuters reports that Spot gold popped above $1,400 for the first time in a week on Tuesday, riding on dollar weakness and buying interest from China, but with year end approaching, trading volumes remained light and prices erratic.
In the futures market, the December gold contract on the Comex closed at $1397/oz, up by 0.9 percent whilst the near-month February gold contract for delivery touched an intra-day high of `20639/10 gm, and closed at `20593/10 gm on the MCX platform.
Silver prices also recovered on Monday after a steep fall last week. Spot silver prices gained slightly less than 3 percent on Monday, closing at $29.50/oz. Silver futures on the MCX (March’2011 contract), closed at `44,406/kg, slightly below its intra-day high of `44,695/kg.
Silver holdings in the iShares Silver Trust, the world’s largest ETF backed by silver slipped to 10,891.18 tonnes on Dec 13, down from its record high of 10,941.34 tonnes hit on Dec 7, On the other hand, SPDR gold holdings stood at 1,289.83 tonnes by Dec 10, down from 1,293.778 tonnes on Dec 9.
