Investing.com – Gold prices drifted lower at the start of a busy week on Monday, as investors shunned safe-haven assets after the U.S. Senate at the weekend.
Talks on reconciling the Senate version with a separate version already passed by the House of Representatives were due to begin later in the week so a final bill can be sent to President Donald Trump to sign into law. Republicans hope to reach a deal by Christmas.
The Trump administration has said its tax cuts will generate growth and spark inflation, which investors hope will prompt a faster pace of monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve.
Gold is highly sensitive to rising rates, which lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as bullion, while boosting the dollar, in which it is priced.
The Federal Reserve is scheduled to hold its final policy meeting of the year on Dec. 12-13, with interest rate futures pricing in a 100% chance of a rate hike at that meeting, according to Investing.com’s . However, markets appeared doubtful over the central bank’s ability to raise rates as much as it would like next year due to concern over the sluggish inflation outlook.
Comex were at $1,276.50 a troy ounce by 5:35AM ET (1035GMT), down about $6.00, or 0.5%, from Friday’s close. The yellow metal lost about 0.7% last week, the second-straight weekly decline.
Meanwhile, market players were on the lookout for more headlines about the , now that Michael Flynn, former national security advisor, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with investigators.
Markets were spooked by an ABC News report on Friday that said Flynn would testify that he was directed to make contact with Russian officials during the presidential campaign in 2016 at Donald Trump’s behest.
However, ABC later corrected the report to say that Trump’s instructions occurred after the election, initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria.
In other metals trading, dipped 2.0 cents, or 0.1%, to $16.36 a troy ounce, fell 0.7% to $934.60, while shed 0.5% at $1,011.38 an ounce.
Meanwhile, inched up 0.9 cents, or 0.3%, to $3.101 a pound.
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Source: Investing.com
