Gold Trades Flat Amid Lack Of Cues

Lacks of fresh cues are keeping gold under check today. MCX Gold futures remainedsteady today as the global prices consolidated around a three week high mark. Weakness inUS dollar has supported gold in last few days. The yellow metal recovered from its fourmonth lows last week and jumped along with equities as the FOMC statement removed the word“patient” regarding when to decide to raise interest rates. However, thestatement also pointed out some weaker US economic data recently, indicating that the Fedmay not be able to raise interest rates as soon as it would have liked. The commodity isapproaching its 50 day Exponential Moving Average, currently placed around $1199 mark. TheCOMEX Gold futures are quoting at $1187.10 per ounce, down 60 cents per ounce on the day.MCX Gold futures are trading at Rs 26192 per 10 grams on the day, down Rs 6 per 10 gramson the day.
The Euro is quoting around 1.0900 mark against the US dollar as markets eyeddevelopments on the Greece front. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the GermanChancellor Angela Merkel failed to provide much of cues for the currency after theiryesterday’s meeting. Merkel said she wanted to see the Greek economy grow whileTsipras said it was better to talk with each other than about each other. Markets remainconcerned about the showoff between these two nations over Greece's efforts to renegotiatethe terms of its international bailout. However, time being the Euro seems to be holdingup amid lack of any fresh news on its debt row.
Gold managed to extend the Fed induced gains amid good follow up buying last week. Theglobal economic recovery remains fragile because of significant risks, according toChristine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, stated media reports.One such risk emanates from the expected tightening of US monetary policy at a time whenmost other countries are easing monetary conditions. If not well managed, thisasynchronous monetary policy may trigger excessive volatility in global financial markets.
Another risk is the strengthening US dollar and its possible impact on emerging marketeconomies. These countries could be vulnerable because many of their banks and companieshave sharply increased their borrowing in dollars over the past five years. A further riskis a prolonged period of low growth and low inflation in Japan and in the Euro Area –although we are beginning to see signs of an improvement in activity and inflationexpectations in the Euro Area.
Gold speculators and large futures traders continued to trim their gold bullish betslast week as gold positions fell for a seventh consecutive week, according to the latestCommitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission(CFTC) on Friday. The non-commercial futures contracts of Comex gold futures, traded bylarge speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +53,093 contracts in the datareported through March 17th. This was a weekly change of -28,799 contracts. The overallgold speculative longs are now at their lowest standing since January 21st 2014.