Investing.com – U.S. gold futures settled a touch higher on Monday after hitting one-week highs above $1,200 an ounce, as bullion traders took in stride trade war tensions and a widely-anticipated Federal Reserve rate hike, which would typically be bearish for the yellow metal.
Other precious metals on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange had mixed settlements, with silver and platinum futures down and palladium futures up.
Base metals also bucked the steady trend in gold with copper settling a touch lower on apparent profit-taking after hitting 3-month highs earlier in the session.
Gold futures for December delivery settled up $3.10 at $1,204.40 a troy ounce as the dollar weakened ahead of a third U.S. rate hike for 2018 expected this week. December gold had earlier peaked at $1,208.80, its highest level since Sept. 17, Investing.com data showed.
“We remain of the view that gold prices reside stubbornly below fundamentally justifiable levels,” Christopher Louney, commodity strategist at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note.
The yellow metal has been trapped in a $20-trading range on the either side of $1,200 for five weeks now, due to a lack of direction and worries over the U.S.-China trade war, which initially boosted the dollar as a safe haven over gold.
But with traders appearing to tire of the back-and-forth drama in the trade war, the dollar was losing favor, helping gold prices recover lately.
A fresh round of U.S. duties on $200 billion of Chinese goods went into effect last week, prompting Beijing to accuse Washington of bullying. China has also cancelled mid-level trade talks with the U.S., as well as a proposed visit by Vice Premier Liu He, scheduled this week, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The US dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of six major currencies, slid by 0.02% to 93.77.
The dollar’s drop at this point is quite unusual as forex traders have been pricing in a 100% chance of the Fed imposing a 25-basis-point rate hike after the central bank’s two-day policy meeting on Wednesday.