• Gold prices bounced off a seven-week low on Monday as safe haven demand ebbed away following pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron's victory in the French presidential election.
• Spot gold <XAU=> steadied after touching 1,224.86 an ounce, its lowest since March 17 and just above the 100-day moving average. By 2:24 p.m. EDT (1824 GMT), it was up 0.01 percent at $1,227.77.
U.S. gold futures <GCcv1> settled up 0.02 percent at $1,227.10.
• The precious metal, seen as a safe haven, fell 3.2 percent last week, its biggest percentage fall since November as polls indicated a landslide for Macron.
• "The result of (the French) election was pretty well forecast ... Last week we had some sizeable (long) liquidation in gold and physical demand remains pretty good right now ... I'm not surprised to see gold supported around current levels," ICBC Standard Bank analyst Tom Kendall said.
The removal of the political risk associated with Macron's rival Marine Le Pen - who had vowed to take France out of the euro - leaves investors refocusing on the pace of monetary policy normalization in Europe and the United States.
• The European Central Bank is expected to have more room to tighten policy as the euro zone's economic recovery gathers pace.
• In the United States, data out on Friday showed the unemployment rate dropped to near a 10-year low, which is seen as reinforcing the case for a U.S. interest rate hike next month.
• Higher rates dent demand for non-interest bearing gold. At the same time, a stronger dollar makes dollar-priced gold costlier for non-U.S. investors.
• The economy's weak performance at the start of the year should slow Federal Reserve plans for further rate increases, now broadly expected to resume at the central bank's June meeting, St. Louis Federal Reserve bank president James Bullard said.
• While money managers cut their net-long position in COMEX gold for the first time in seven weeks in the week to May 2, they also sharply reduced their bullish stance in silver by 25,602 lots to the lowest since January, U.S. government data showed late Friday.
• The move came as silver prices fell to technically oversold levels.
• Spot silver <XAG=> dipped 0.1 percent to $16.28 an ounce.
Reference: Reuters
Thai
Eng