LONDON: Gold steadied on Monday as the dollar wallowed near three-year lows following a US government shutdown, although bullishness in the wider financial markets capped the precious metal’s gains.

World stocks shrugged off the shutdown in Washington, with investors seemingly confident the conflict between President Donald Trump and Democrats can be resolved swiftly.

“We did see gold reach four-month highs last week on fears an agreement wouldn’t be reached and indeed that came to pass. The fact that gold is a bit soft this morning suggests it was largely in the price,” said Mitsubishi analyst Jonathan Butler.

Spot gold was flat at $1,331.61 an ounce by 1250GMT. The precious metal fell 0.5 per cent last week, its first weekly decline in six weeks, having hit four-month highs last Monday.

Among other precious metals, spot silver was down 0.2pc at $16.97 an ounce. Platinum rose 0.2pc to $1,015.10 an ounce, after touching its highest since Sept 8 at $1,018.80.

“Platinum has once again narrowed the price gap to palladium to below $100 per troy ounce,” said Commerzbank in a note. Palladium fell 0.7pc to $1,097.10 an ounce.

It touched record highs last week at $1,138. Flows of palladium out of UK stocks to Hong Kong are picking up as demand from Asian industry grows.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2018